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What Next for the Movement in Wisconsin?

2011-06-16T20:00:00.004-05:00

An article I wrote for Justice, newspaper of Socialist Alternative.

Many workers thought they could breathe a sigh of relief when the bill was placed in legal limbo. However, the Republicans declared that, if the legal situation isn’t resolved by the end of June, they will simply re-pass the bill and circumvent the legal challenge.

They have also introduced a whole slew of right-wing legislation and draconian budget cuts that will impact the lives of every Wisconsinite. This ranges from a voter ID bill, to an Arizona-style anti-immigration law, to an all-out assault on public services. This raises the need to rebuild the mass movement to defeat the whole Walker agenda.

Limits of the Recall

Since the mass protests, much of the energy against Walker has been channeled into a series of recall campaigns. Eight Republican state senators face recall elections, starting in July, and recall petitions against Walker himself will be circulated in November. Walker and his cronies certainly deserve to be recalled and, for many, the recall campaigns are the only visible sign of opposition. However, the recall campaigns are no substitute for mass action.

It can take a long time for the recall campaigns to run their course, and results may be mixed while Republicans continue to inflict maximum damage along the way. The senatorial recalls cover a small part of the state, while the rest of the state is demobilized.

Furthermore, in the recall elections the Republicans will be challenged primarily by Democrats. This means the outcome of the struggle is being decided by two parties of big business. The last time the Democrats were in power, they kept state workers in 15-month contract negotiations and launched deep budget cuts. They can’t be counted on to wage our fight for us.

Do-or-Die Moment for Public-Sector Unions

While we wait for the recall elections to take effect, the unions are faced with a struggle for their very existence. Under the “budget repair bill,” public-sector unions will be stripped of collective bargaining rights and the ability to collect dues. They will then be forced to hold annual recertification elections in which 51% of an entire bargaining unit has to vote for the continued existence of these crippled unions.

Where possible, unions should recertify. However, the recertification process is stacked against them. For instance, if the bill passes in June as expected, these recertification votes will happen in the summer, when the teachers aren’t at work. What matters is that the unions fight back.

Public-sector unions should place contract demands on the politicians, whether or not they have legal bargaining rights. If Walker refuses to listen to the unions, the unions should force him to listen. This would require job actions, from slow-downs and sickouts up to and including coordinated strikes and workplace occupations. A strike is a strike, whether or not the union is legally recognized.

This is a do-or-die moment. If the public-sector unions don’t fight back now, they could be liquidated before the “budget repair bill” has a chance to be repealed. If they do fight, they can stop Walker in his tracks.

Build Rank-and-File Opposition

Unfortunately, the union leaders have completely failed to provide a way forward. The leaders of the two biggest public-sector unions in Wisconsin, AFSCME and the AFT, have declared their intention not to recertify. Scandalously, Bryan Kennedy, President of AFT-Wisconsin, said: “We may just continue to be a membership organization that advocates for all sorts of things,” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/6/11).

This would mean AFSCME and the AFT would effectively cease to be unions and become nothing more than lobbying groups for the Democratic Party. Even unions that are attempting recertification, such as the Wisconsin Education Association Council, have no strategy to carry it out.

It is up to rank-and-file members to defend their unions. After all, that’s who the unions are supposed to represent. They need to organize their co-workers and call on their unions to prepare for action. They need to put counterproposals at their union meetings, calling on their unions to adopt a fighting strategy.

More Struggles Ahead

The scale of Walker’s attacks goes well beyond the public-sector workers themselves. Immigrants are under attack. Voting rights are under attack. Health care is under attack. Women’s right to choose is under attack. Schools are being threatened with closure and privatization. State-owned power plants and wetlands are being sold off to big business.

Fortunately, there are organizations challenging these attacks, such as Wisconsin Resists, US Uncut, and the No Cuts, No Concessions! campaign. These groups have carried out many important demonstrations and direct actions. These actions play an important role in challenging the ideology of the Democrats and Republicans alike, and in keeping the movement alive.

These groups need to help build a broad, campaigning coalition, centered around the unifying principle of opposing all of the cuts. It should unite the public-sector workers with those who use their services, while being independent of both parties of big business. This campaign would need to organize in the community, workplaces and schools, and escalate the direct actions to a mass scale. The coalitions should raise the need for candidates independent of the two corporate parties who oppose all cuts to jobs, union rights and services.

The anger that is now simmering will reach fever pitch when the law goes into effect and real consequences begin to be felt. With an independent, class-based strategy, that anger can be channeled into waging a serious struggle against the Walker agenda. This is how we can win.

Tyler, the Creator vs. Lars Von Trier: Offensiveness Smackdown

2011-05-25T20:48:00.011-05:00

First things first. You know racism, sexism, homophobia and all that? Yeah, well, those things all suck. They're just bad, no ifs, ands or buts. And when I say "bad", I mean the bad kind of bad, not the good kind. And when I said "bad" that time, I mean the same thing.

However, this does not necessarily mean that saying racist, sexist and homophobic things is inherently bad. For instance, there's this song called "Springtime for Hitler", which is incredibly anti-Semitic, but is, nonetheless hilarious. This is not to say, as post-modernists do, that art must be judged purely on its artistic value and not it's political value. If a work of art talks about racial issues, than it's a political work of art, and the politics must also be judged. But, things do get a bit more complicated.

You have ironic racists and you have people who use irony as a cover for genuine racism. You have crazy harmless people and you have crazy dangerous people. You have art that is meant to shock, and you have art that is meant to convert. And you have those Andy Kaufman types who are to obtuse that you can't quite tell what they're trying to do. And in those instances, you have controversies.

For today's smackdown, we look at two recent controversies involving offensive art. The first controversy takes the form of an epic hip-hop feud between rapper Tyler, the Creator and Canadian indie-pop duo Tegan and Sara. The second controversy takes the form of an epic hip-hop feud between Danish film director Lars Von Trier and whoever it is who runs the Cannes Film Festival.

First let's take a look at Tyler, the Creator. His controversy arose from his songs which have a tendency to include sexist and homophobic lyrics. Here, for example, is "Tron Cat" from his latest album, Goblin:

Pretty strange. And pretty misogynistic and homophobic. While, somehow, being simultaneously pro-cetafur. Anyway, the oeuvre and critical sucess of Mr. the Creator ticked off Sara Keirsten Quin, the Sara half of Tegan and Sara. This is understandable, since Tegan and Sara are 1) women 2) gay and 3) not cetafurs. Ms. Quin ushered in the aforementioned epic hip-hop feud by posting "A Call to Change" on the band's website, saying

"As journalists and colleagues defend, excuse and congratulate ‘Tyler, the Creator,’ I find it impossible not to comment. In any other industry would I be expected to tolerate, overlook and find deeper meaning in this kid’s sickening rhetoric? Why should I care about this music or its “brilliance” when the message is so repulsive and irresponsible? There is much that upsets me in this world, and this certainly isn’t the first time I’ve drafted an open letter or complaint, but in the past I’ve found an opinion – some like-minded commentary – that let me rest assured that my outrage, my voice, had been accounted for. Not this time."

The first thing that is apparent about Sara Quin's response is that she clearly has no understanding of how to conduct an epic hip-hop feud. The way you go after a rival artist is to release a "diss track" in which you rap about how your opponent is a total fag.

That being said, she does have a point. Critics do have a tendency to pardon homophobia and misogyny in music, and hip-hop in particular, which they would never do with racism. And dropping mad beats shouldn't excuse dropping horrible lyrics. In a way, the popular critical response to this sort of thing is not only sexist and homophobic, but a bit racist, since it assumes that black people just can't help themselves and so who are we to criticize them for homophobia and misogyny.

But I'm not sure that Lady Q picked the best example. Someone like Jay-Z, who raps about pimping in order to give himself street cred to cover up the fact that he's a rich businessman, might be more worthy of condemnation. With Tyler, the Creator, he's either playing a character and deliberately trying to shock, or he's genuine. If the former is true, his popularity stems from the fact that his listeners know that misogyny and homophobia are wrong. Otherwise they wouldn't be shocked. If the latter is true, then he's a cetafur, and probably crazy.

Our next controversy magnet is possibly crazy but probably not a cetafur. But, if you take him at his word, he is a Nazi. Here is Lars Von Trier's controversial speech at the Cannes Film Festival:

Now, if you take what he says here completely straight, the man's a monster. And the fine folks at Cannes certainly felt that way when they launched their epic hip-hop feud, saying:

"The Festival de Cannes provides artists from around the world with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation. The board of directors profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the festival. The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately."

Once again, they neglected to engage in the proper hip-hop feud etiquette by rapping about how Lars Von Trier is a fag. But they did bar him from ever entering films in the festival again and he was kicked out of a restaurant.

Now, the response to both this and Tylergate has involved a lot of impassioned defenses of "free speech". "Free speech" typically means allowing people to say what they want, but some people seem to believe that "free speech" means forbidding people from complaining about music they don't like on their blog, or forbidding film festivals from deciding which films they want to screen. Technically, that sort of thing should be the opposite of free speech, but whatever.

In the case of Larsgate, the whole persona non grata thing and the banning from restaurants thing does bring up some issues relating to free speech, but I don't think too many people would mind if Cannes banned a genuine anti-Semite from participating in the festival. For instance, if, hypothetically, Mel Gibson made a movie and tried to air it at the festival the folks at Cannes would certainly be justified in turning him down, or, at the very least, not giving him a standing ovation. Oh, wait a minute.

Unlike standing ovation recipient Mel Gibson, food non-recipient Lars Von Trier was likely kidding when he made his anti-Semitic remarks. He has a reputation of making dour, serious, pretentious movies and then giving light-hearted, jokey interviews that make fun of his film-making reputation. Earlier in the interview, he said that his next movie was going to be a three-hour porno about the schism between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. Then there's the whole "I thought I was a jew, but then I found out I was a Nazi" thing. When he gets to the "I understand Hitler" bit, Kirsten Dunst starts to get weirded out, and Lars reassures her "there will come a point at the end of this", suggesting that he had a clever punchline in mind that he forgot. So really, it's just a bombed joke rather than serious sentiments.

Or is it?

The big problem with both of these things is that the artists are straddling this line between irony and sincerity, and it's not quite clear which. Maybe Tyler, the Creator really is a misogynistic, homophobic cetafur, or maybe he's a cetafur who's pretending to be misogynistic and homophobic. Lars Von Trier has made a career of never being clear whether he's being serious or not. For instance, Von Trier claims that the reason he's never been to America is because he's afraid of flying. Yet one of his first films was this music video.

As "Springtime for Hitler" shows us, fake bigotry can be perfectly enjoyable. But when people straddle the line like this there's always a danger that you'll inadvertently defend Carlos Mencia because you've convinced yourself that he's being ironic. That sort of thing can make it hard to judge whether Tyler and Lars should be buried or praised.

But, as this is a Smackdown, we must declare a winner.

And the winner is . . . well, actually, there is a way to distinguish irony from sincerity. You can ask them. When Siouxsie Sioux got in trouble for wearing a Nazi dominatrix outfit at a concert, she apologized and clarified that her intent was to do a bdsm cosplay thing, not to endorse Naziism. Varg Vikernes, on the other hand, can go fuck himself. So to decide whether Tyler, the Creator and Lars Von Trier are rotten bigots or subversive geniuses we better see how they handled their respective epic hip-hop feuds.

Lars apologized for his behavior, saying “I like provocations when they have a purpose. And this had no purpose whatsoever,” and “the Holocaust is the worst crime against humanity that I can remember”. Most importantly, he said “I’m not Mel Gibson. I’m definitely not Mel Gibson.” He didn't rap about how the organizers of Cannes are fags, but I suppose this is the next best thing. And it does provide further evidence to the "I was trying to tell a joke and forgot the punchline" theory.

Tyler responded to Sara Quinn by tweeting "If Tegan And Sara Need Some Hard Dick, Hit Me Up!" Now that's just pathetic. It would be one thing if you rapped about how Tegan and Sara were fags (which would be factually correct), but tweeting? Come on! Lars Von Trier wins!

Walkerville, Illinois

2011-04-16T20:13:00.003-05:00

With all the shenanigans going on here in Wisconsin, it's easy to overlook the bigger picture. Nationwide, there is an assault on working people. Ohio and Indiana have launched similar attacks on public sector unions. In New Hampshire, they're pushing forward an all out "right to work (for less)" law that would effectively abolish all unions, not just the public sector ones. In Michigan, they've established a "financial martial law" bill that would allow the Governor to unilaterally dissolve any local government he deemed to be spending too much on public services.

And then there's Illinois.

Recently, the Illinois State Senate unanimously passed SB 7, an assault on the teachers union. This bill makes it nearly impossible for teachers to strike (you know, for the children), forces teachers to work extra hours with no extra pay (you know, for the children), makes it easier to lay off teachers (you know, for the children), and makes teacher's pay based on their centering their entire curriculum around standardized tests (you know, for the children).

Oddly enough, this was presented by the Chicago Teachers Union leadership as a "victory". This is because Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was initially pushing for an even more Draconian form of education deform. Emanuel wanted to introduce Walker-style measures that would make it so that teachers couldn't bargain over anything other than pay. He also wanted to out-Walker Walker by insisting that any Teachers Union local that went on strike would automatically be decertified.

And that's Illinois, Democratic stronghold, bluest of all the blue states, with the possible exception of Massachusetts. This is the place that brought us such "progressive" luminaries as Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emanuel and Rod Blagojevich.

But here's the strange thing about Illinois, and Chicago in particular. It's politicians tend to be Democrats. Rahm Emanuel was Obama's Chief of Staff before buying the title of Mayor. Supposedly, the Democrats are friends of labor and all that, so some might find it odd for them to be attacking the unions.

On closer inspection, however, the Democrats have been in the forefront of attacking public sector workers, teachers in particular. Wisconsin Republicans may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but the Illinois Democrats are the ones who gave them the straw in the first place.

Back in 2001, in the Bush days, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, an Illinois Democrat, launched the first major assault on Chicago teachers. This was through a process called "mayoral control". This says that, rather than having school districts controlled democratically by the parents, teachers and students in those districts, the entire school system is run by a CEO appointed by the Mayor (you know, for the children).

In 2004, Daley appointed businessman Arne Duncan, an Illinois Democrat, as the CEO of the Chicago school system. Duncan launched an education deform program called "Renaissance 2010", which shut down schools in poor minority neighborhoods (you know, for the children), selling public schools to private corporations, (you know, for the children), and setting up highly militarized charter schools (you know, for the children). And of course, busting the Teachers Unions (you know, for the children). Duncan was later appointed Secretary of Education by Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, where the two of them praised the mass firing of every single teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island (you know, for the children).

This may not be as extreme as Walker's attacks, which also went after snow-plow drivers and prison guards, and which tried to bust all the public sector unions at once rather than through a gradual process. However, the Democrats and Republicans, as the two main political parties in the US, are setting the terms of the debate, and they agree on all the fundamentals.

In a world dominated by reason, someone like Walker would never be taken seriously. The idea that a candidate funded by bankers and real estate agents would claim that public sector workers are responsible for the countries financial troubles is pretty blatant scapegoating. But the scapegoating of public-sector workers was legitimized by Obama, Emanuel, Daley and Duncan. When even the director of @An Inconvenient Truth@ says that public-sector workers are responsible for everything bad that ever happened in the universe, it’s a lot easier to take someone like Walker seriously.

In fact the Democrats perfected the Orwellian double-speak that Walker would later adopt. Once upon a time, the term “education reform” referred to the @reform@ of education. You know, things like increasing student participation, democratizing the schools, reducing class sizes. But thanks to the Chicago democrats, education “reform” now means, increasing reliance on standardized tests, mayoral control and laying off teachers. So people who @actually@ want to reform public education are now enemies of education “reform” and are therefore deemed reactionaries. Daley’s plan to turn the clock back to the middle ages was even called “Renaissance 2010”.

So when Walker supporters refer to public school teachers as “government bureaucrats” and the Koch brothers as “real America”, they’re just following a grand, bipartisan tradition.

Unfortunately, the labor movement is completely tied to the Democratic party, which is the primary reason for its decline. Throughout Chicago’s education deform process, AFT president Randi Weingarten negotiated away her members jobs in order to make nice with the Obama administration. During the struggle in Wisconsin, the showed up to a GMM of my union local to proclaim that Arne Duncan was on his side, based on the fact that he had a meeting with Walker. When Walker’s bill passed, rather than fight for the continued existence, the AFT-Wisconsin halted all activity to campaign for the party that kept them suck in fifteen-month contract negotiations.

In Chicago it looked like this was going to change, when the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators broke Weingarten’s stranglehold over the Chicago Teachers Union. But when SB 7 passed, the new CTU president, Karen Lewis, treated the assault on worker’s rights as a “compromise victory”, arguing “We decided to have a Springfield strategy and that's how the game is played.”

That may be how the game is played, but it’s not how it should be played. If you’re going to truly oppose the Republican war on workers, you have to oppose the Democratic war on workers as well. If you're want to defend the workers in Wisconsin, you have to defend the workers in Illinois.

I Still Exist

2011-03-25T19:30:00.005-05:00

You may have noticed I haven't updated my blog in a while. No, I haven't given up blogging to pursue a hip-hop career. I've just been a bit preoccupied for the past few weeks. "Preoccupied with what?" you ask? Well, this:

Things have since quieted down a bit, which is incredibly terrible for the public sector workers of Wisconsin, but good for readers of this blog, because it means I can resume posting things.

I could fill an entire book describing what I've been doing during that intervening time. If I did, it would probably be called Homage to Madisonia. Eventually, I would like to share some of these experiences in detail on my blog, but it will take a bit of time to write them up (a lot of stuff happened in the past few weeks), so my next batch of blog posts will be about other stuff, including the promised Sci-Fa-Lit contribution about Galileo.

But if you insist on knowing what happened, here's a quickie summary.

It all started when Wisconsin's Governor Scott "13 Century Man" Walker decided he needed someone to blame for the economic crisis. A reasonable person would blame the banks and real estate companies because, you know, they're the ones responsible for the economic crisis. But since Walker received campaign contributions from those guys, he decided it would be better to blame somebody with less money. In situations like these, it's customary to blame the Teenage Immigrant Welfare Mothers on Drugs. However, ever since Bristol Palin, teen mothers have been considered incredibly hip among the anti-abortion crowd, so he needed somebody else. As such, he decided to blame me.

Well, he decided to blame public sector workers, such as my self, and unionized public sector workers, such as myself, in particular. As such he initiated a "Budget Repair Bill" to take away public sector union rights and steel their money in order to give more tax cuts to the super-rich.

Naturally, this pissed a lot of people off, leading to a series of mass protests, including sick-outs among the teachers unions (that my union completely bungled) and an occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol, and a sit-in to keep the State Senate from meeting. And the Democratic Senators fled the state. In my later series of blog posts I'll describe some of these protests in detail, but for now, I'll defer you to the following Radiohead music video to give you an idea.

It was all very uplifting. When the the Governor of your state decides to single you out as the cause of the economic crisis, it can be a bit depressing. But then stuff like that happens and you feel a lot better. We got all sorts of solidarity. The police and firefighter unions, who were exempt from the bill because they endorsed Walker, came out in support. All the homeless street musicians performed in the Capitol. Iranian dissidents ordered us pizzas. Even the union representing the Green Bay Packers came out in the support. As a mathematician who doesn't care too much about football and didn't even watch the Super Bowl, I would like to say thank you to those football players for showing solidarity when I was under attack.

Of course Walker didn't care about that, because as far as he is concerned, none of us were "real Americans" like the Koch brothers. Normally, a situation like that would go one of two ways: either the action would be ratcheted up (like the anti-Vietnam war movement), or the movement would gradually fizzle out (like the anti-Iraq war movement). Instead, the situation went in a third direction: it rapidly fizzled out. This was due to the union leaders being more concerned with appearing "respectable" to Democratic politicians than defending their members.

The first test came with the occupation of the Capitol. After being tolerated for a while, a move was made to kick out all the protestors from the Capitol. In response, my union passed a declaration in support of the occupation and promptly changed their mind as soon as people were told to leave. But because there were so many protestors in the Capitol, and because the police union supported the protestors, nothing ended up happening. So my union changed their mind again, but the union marshals instructed everybody to leave. The result was that my union, which has a reputation as the most radical union in Wisconsin, was more conservative than the police union.

This is known as the Duke of Plaza Toro School of Trade Unionism. Whenever there's any fighting, you lead your union from behind (you find it less exciting). But when away your union runs, your place is at the fore(-o).

Any time any question of fighting came, the union leaders came with the same reply: we can't do that because it will hurt public opinion. From the occupation of the Capitol, to the general strike question, to the question of slightly-less-general strikes, to the question of whether or not we should immediately give in on all of the demands except collective bargaining rights, we were told that we should take the most conservative option, because otherwise it would alienate us from "real" America.

This last issue about the concessions made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The Koch brothers were telling private-sector workers that public-sector workers have it easy because of their health care and pensions. The obvious way to win over the private-sector workers would be to tell them that they also deserved good health care and pensions and that the best way to do achieve that would be to join a union. Instead, Randi Weingarten, the president of my national union (AFT), insisted on the Colbert Report (without consulting the membership), that of course we all need to make sacrifices, and all that matters was being allowed to have a union that will collect dues but not fight for anyone.

This whole attitude came to the fore when the Republican Senators decided that the bill wasn't really about the budget after all, and as such didn't require the same size quorum. This resulted in a sudden angry demonstration inside the Capitol, in which thousands of people came in through windows (I used the door), with chants of "General Strike!". As such, the leaders of my union decided to lead their union from behind (they found it less exciting), and agree that if the other unions called for a general strike they would endorse it. The other union leaders responded in kind. As such there was no general strike, or any other sort of strike.

After that, the movement completely died down at the precise moment when it should have been at its peak. Suddenly everything became about recall campaigns and legal challenges. The legal challenges to the bill were based, not on the content of the bill, but on a technicality about how it was voted on. As such, they can just vote on it again if it gets thrown out. And by the time any recall campaign can take effect, the bill, having passed will effectively destroy the public sector unions. And then, at best, we'll replace the party funded by the anti-union Koch brothers with the party funded by the anti-union Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And yet, this strategy was deemed to be "reasonable" because apparently "reasonable" and "passive" are the same thing.

This resulted in a series of frustrating debates within my union and others that ended up being kind of depressing. Suffice to say it culminated in a presentation to the union members that equated strike action with the bombing of Hiroshima. And my union is seriously considering responding to the decertification threat by re-branding itself as a student club. Oh, yeah, and we don't have a contract. But it's not over yet, so it might possibly, conceivably get better. Or worse. We'll see.

Anyway, with all that, I had a bit more free time, but I was put out of the mood to write anything for the blog for a while. So, a quick recap of what else happened while I was otherwise engaged. Also, there was a nuclear disaster in Japan (you know, it's kind of like a teachers' strike). And there were a bunch of revolutions in the middle east that also got derailed. Oh yeah, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama bombed Libya. And on the good side of things the United Left made a breakthrough in the Irish general election.

For the time being, I have more free time and you can look forward to reading about all of that in excruciating detail. And while you're waiting for that, you can look forward to reading about the awesomeness of Galileo, the pointlessness of Bing and the truly outstandingness of Fight Club.

Later.

Sci-Fa-Lit: Introduction

2011-02-05T20:04:00.005-06:00

I'm starting a new feature on my blog called "Sci-Fa-Lit" (short for "Science Fact Literature"). Each entry will take a closer look at some book or essay about science (fact, not fiction). It could be about the history of science, the philosophy of science, the politics of science, or the current events of science. Or maybe just a textbook.

Like most of my other blog features, it will be somewhat sporadic. I'll try to update it once a month, but if I'm reviewing a long book, it might take longer. To help you out, I will announce the next two entries at the end of each entry (including this one). I'll also provide a link to either an online version of the text or the book's Amazon page. That way you'll have time to read along.

And, in case you're wondering, the term "Sci-Fa" originates in the 3rd Rock From the Sun episode "Hotel Dick", with special guest George Takei.

The relevant scene occurs at the 5:25 mark.

So, a few words on what constitutes science.

The so-called "hard sciences", biology, chemistry, physics, etc. are examples of science. Duh.

The so-called "soft sciences", sociology, economics, linguistics, etc. are also examples of science. The fact that a lot of these sciences deal with society and, as such, can't be tested in a laboratory, causes some, especially those under the pernicious influence of Karl Popper, to deem them pseudoscience. Furthermore, this perception causes a lot more pseudoscientists and postmodernists than usual to be attracted to those fields. However, a theory in these fields can still have evidence in its favor and against it. When that evidence is overwhelming, you can still make definitive statements about its truth. So you can still test theories, even if those tests aren't as controlled as one might prefer.

Mathematics is an example of science. Some people, while not considering mathematics a pseudoscience, nonetheless consider it a separate entity from science. This is because the methods of mathematics, involving logical reasoning seem distinct from the methods of standard science, focusing on experimentation. But logical reasoning is still a form of experimentation, just very controlled. They are still prone to error (remember when they found that hole in Andrew Wiles's Fermat's Last Theorem proof?), but it's much less likely.

Art is not a science, nor is it a pseudoscience. Since art deals with questions of opinion rather than fact, it's something that people can deal with as they please. However science can be used in art, for example applying optics to painting, acoustics to music, or just drawing pictures of pretty fractals. And one can study art scientifically, looking at biological and sociological reasons for why certain things are considered aesthetically pleasing and others are not.

Religion, chi, new age spirit crap, etc. are not examples of science. Nor are they notions separate from science. Like science, these notions deal with questions of fact, and are subject to scientific scrutiny. However, they are all wrong, and hence pseudoscience.

There is no easy method of distinguishing between science and pseudoscience. Newtonian mechanics is technically wrong, because of relativity, but it is still nonetheless a useful tool. Similarly, while the Earth may be round, one can still navigate using a flat map. And, in fact, pretty much any scientific theory is going to have problems like that. The trick is knowing the extent to which a theory applies. Occam's Razor can help, but has its own limitations. Popper's "falsifiability" stuff fails its own falsifiability test and is pretty worthless.

However, just because the boundary between real science and pseudoscience can get a bit blurry doesn't mean that all theories have to be treated equally legitimate. Sometimes the evidence is so overwhelming that you can definitively declare a theory to be legitimate.

And let's face it. One of these songs is definitively better than the other.

The series will begin in earnest next month.

And, as I promised, here are the first two entries:

We will start at the beginning, with Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, by Galileo Galilei (1632). Widely considered to be the birth of scientific reasoning, this fictitious dialogue (successfully) ridicules the prevailing notions of astronomy and (unsuccessfully) challenge's Kepler's (correct) view of the tides.

And after that we'll take a look at The Character of Physical Law, by Richard Feynman (1964). This collects a series of lectures on the philosophy of science by a guy known for his hostility to philosophy. He does this by using the science of gravitation as an example, tracing its history from Galileo's time to what, at the time, was the present day.

Buffy Season 8 Concludes

2011-01-31T20:43:00.008-06:00

Last month, the eighth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reached its stunning conclusion, nearly four years after it began and six and a half hears after the shows series finale. Such is the power of comic books.

The result was a massive 40-issue season bringing in, not only Joss Whedon, but other Buffy writers as well as comic book writers like Brian K. Vaughan into the mix. It included virtually every living character from the show and a few dead ones (I won't spoil them). And also Fray.

I will admit that when I first heard that Joss Whedon was planning on releasing an epic comic book eighth season of Buffy my first reaction was "Why" followed by "aren't you doing Buffy Season 8 and not Angel Season 6?" But, after a rough start, Buffy Season 8 won me over.

Making it a comic book had its own strengths and weaknesses. On the strong side, it meant no studio interference. The comic book format means you can tell multi-issue arcs that act as the equivalent to an episode of the TV show, or you can tell standalone short-story-type issues, and Season 8 did both. Recurring characters can appear even if the actor has a hectic schedule. This resulted in a really good Faith-and-Giles-centered arc by Brian K. Vaughan that barely featured Buffy at all. Also, you don't have to spend a whole lot of money on fancy special effects, so you can pretty much do whatever you want.

On the downside, you don't have to spend a whole lot of money on fancy special effects, so you can pretty much do whatever you want. The first arc in the series fell in love with this, resulting in a lot of high-tech stuff that didn't really fit in. Also, there was a broadening of the Buffyverse bestiary to include things like fairies, centaurs and unicorns. However, in strict adherence to continuity, there were no leprechauns.

Also, there was the introduction of "comic book time", where characters age slowly. As such, we have characters who have aged at most a two years from the end of the series talking about the Arctic Monkeys, Mad Men and the infamous "fat Lee Adama" arc on Battlestar Galactica. This wasn't really that intrusive, but it can be really annoying in long-running series. However it's the primary cause for the incomprehensible continuity (or lack thereof) in mainstream superhero comics. There's always a nagging feeling that they will end up having to confine the characters we know to an "Earth 1" parallel universe because their pop culture references are too out of date. Fortunately that has yet to occur.

The biggest problem in the early going came down to the "Why" question I asked earlier. But once they found out an answer, it became the series' biggest asset. Of all of Joss Whedon's shows, Buffy is the only one that ended because it made sense storywise rather than because the studio didn't find it profitable enough. As such, those other shows were the ones most in need of continuation. Fortunately we got an Angel comic shortly after the Buffy comic started. We also got a Dollhouse comic as it ended. And the Serenity comics have continued their asymptotic approach toward relevance.

But with Buffy, we had the characters all moving on, leaving the hole in the ground formerly known as Sunnydale and going their separate ways. When the series started, they all got back together, one at a time, as a high-tech slayer army of sorts. It was a decent enough story, but it didn't give any reason why it should exist. That took until the fourth arc.

In a note at the end of the last issue, Whedon explains what his motivations were, and gets at what ultimately made the series work.

Every season of Buffy had a different intent, and a different set of challenges, from which to build. The biggest challenge in Season 8 was that many years ago I wrote a Slayer comic and set it in the far future so that it could never affect Buffy's life. I was so young. But the challenge of reconciling the optimistic, empowering message of the final episode with the dystopian, Slayerless vision of Fray's future gave Season 8 a genuine weight.

For those unfamiliar, the comic book he's talking about is Fray. It was an eight-issue series written from 2001-2003, set in the Buffyverse, but in the future. The premise was that all magic had been banished from our world, so there were no more slayers and no more demons. So everything is all Bladerunner-esque until magic starts creeping back in, resulting in the first slayer in forever being called, as well as a bunch of demons and vampires showing up.

Meanwhile, at the end of the TV series, we had Willow casting a spell that made all of the potential slayers become full slayers in a very empowering and symbolic finale. So in Season 8, we have to deal with the events leading to the suppression of all magic, which is being lead by a mysterious big bad named "Twilight".

And in case you're wondering, Joss Whedon was unaware of the Twilight books when he came up with that name, but when he found out, he made sure to have Buffy make a jab against them. A handy companion to the fan-made jabs.

Part of what makes this work is that it takes on one of the big issues in escapist stories about superpowered individual, namely the reactionary dictatorial undertones of putting out lives in a Nietzschean Übermensch. This has been dealt with before, for instance in Watchmen (the book, not the movie) and Kick-Ass (the book, not the movie). But it's not something that gets a whole lot of attention.

In the case of Buffy, the Season 7 finale was pose as "sharing the power". But due to the dictates of the fantasy-babble, this meant only sharing it with a small minority of the population, which dampens the message if you think about it too hard. In the Season 8 comic, this oversight is turned into a serious think piece, albeit one with misogynistic Japanese vampire cat toys that crawl down people's throats, possessing them while slowly sucking them dry and who can merge into a super-vampire-kitty that can only be defeated by an epic submarine battle.

In addition to Twilight and the vampire cat toys, there is also a group of newly empowered slayers who decide that they're above mere mortals and start treating the world as their plaything. So as Twilight is trying to bring about the end of magic, there are all these rogue slayers out pretty much justifying Twilight's decision. Also Japanese vampire cats.

By the way, credit where credit's due. The vampire cat toy submarine stuff came, not from the mind of Joss Whedon, but Steven S. DeKnight, the former Buffy and Angel writer currently showrunning Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

So anyway, because of this extra moral ambiguity, it's never clear until the last issue how things will turn out and, even then it's not clear whether that's how it should have gone down.

It also let's Willow's character come back to the spotlight. Her relationship with magic was somewhat marred in the series by a clumsy drug metaphor. But this time it's placed within the framework of Twilights plan to bring about the end of magic and it makes the whole thing work. Once again, there's some questioning of whether the magic is really good for her or not, but no more drug metaphors (yay!). Instead we get something very unexpected in the Fray crossover arc which I won't spoil.

It takes until Issue 16 before the writers figured out what they were doing, but along the way, there are also some good stories in their own right. The second arc in the series, written by Brian K. Vaughan (Runaways, Y: the Last Man and Ex Machina), centers on Faith and Giles dealing with a villain tangentially related to the master plot.

When Buffy the TV series ended, it pretty much wrapped everything up as far as Buffy/her friends/Sunnydale was concerned, which is why the comic didn't seem to have much reason to exist. But the Buffyverse still had a lot to explore, some of which took place in Angel Season 5. Around that time there were proposals for a Faith TV series, as well as a Giles-centric prequel show on the BBC called Ripper, but neither of those happened.

Brian K. Vaughan's arc ended up being the closes we've gotten to either of those shows, and it suggests that either of those shows would still work well as their own comic book series.

The epic scope ended up covering pretty much the entirety of the Buffyverse. In addition to Fray and the Faith and Giles stuff, things eventually tied back to what was going on with the Angel and Spike comics. There was even an issue by Jeph Loeb (Batman: The Long Halloween) that managed to tie things in with the unaired promo for a not-picked-up Buffy Saturday Morning Cartoon.

When I started with issue 1 I was wondering why we needed a season 8, but by the time I got to issue 40 I was wondering when they would get around to season 9.

To buy the books:
Vol. 1: The Long Way Home, by Joss Whedon
Vol. 2: No Future for You, by Brian K. Vaughan and Joss Whedon
Vol. 3: Wolves at the Gate, by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon
Vol. 4: Time of Your Life, by Jeph Loeb and Joss Whedon
Vol. 5: Predators and Prey, by Steven S. DeKnight, Jane Espenson, Drew Greenberg, Jim Krueger and Doug Petrie
Vol. 6: Retreat, by Jane Espenson
Vol. 7: Twilight, by Brad Meltzer and Joss Whedon
Vol. 8: Last Gleaming, by Scott Allie and Joss Whedon

Note 1: There was a controversial event in the third arc I didn't mention. I will still not mention it to avoid spoilers. But I will say it was somewhat out-of-character and a bit of a publicity stunt, but ultimately much ado about nothing. And the over-the-top reaction was far more disturbing than the actual event.

Note 2: You may be aware that Kaz Kuzui, the guy who executive produced the Buffy movie that nobody liked and got his name put on all the credits has announced that he's planning on "re-imagining" Buffy the Vampire Slayer, JJ Trek-style. Nothing good can come of this.

Truly Outstanding Albums: John Henry, by They Might Be Giants

2011-01-28T19:43:00.005-06:00

In 1965, Bob Dylan introduced electric guitars to the Newport Folk Festival for the first time, and the face of music was irrevocably altered. Never before had anyone thought of using electric guitars in folk music (provided you ignore the Byrds as well as Dylan's own "Bringing it All Back Home" album released earlier that year). And never before had an artist received such unjustified hate for introducing new instruments. And it would never happen again . . . until 1994, when They Might Be Giants released "John Henry".

In the years since the Newport controversy, things have settled a little. Pete Seeger claims he only called for the amps to be shut off, because they were set up poorly and that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. But the hatred reserved for "John Henry" continues to this day. Pitchfork Media even declared "John Henry" to be "one of the least interesting albums ever released".

While Dylan was crucified for using electric guitars instead of acoustic guitars, They Might Be Giants were crucified for using drums instead of a drum machine.

As such, it's fitting that the album was called "John Henry". For those unfamiliar, "John Henry" is an old blues song about a guy named "John Henry", who like hitting things. One day he's confronted with a machine that hits things, so John Henry challenges the machine to a competition to see who's better at hitting things. Everybody thinks the machine will win, but John Henry gives it everything he's got and ultimately achieves victory. But this victory comes with a cost. Depending on which version of the song you're listening to, that cost is either that he dies, or that Pitchfork Media calls him "one of the least interesting people in existence".

Like Dylan going electric, this move towards using a whole band rather, than just two guys, an accordion, a guitar and random electronic stuff, came wholly unexpected. Never before had a nerd rock group ever incorporated a full band, provided you ignore Moxy Früvous, the Barenaked Ladies and They Might Be Giants' own "Back to Skull" EP, released earlier that year.

And just as Dylan signaled his decision to go electric with the confrontational "Maggie's Farm" a song that mocked different facets facets of the folk scene, They Might Be Giants signaled their decision to include drums with "Snail Shell" a song about a snail that somehow got out of its shell and is thanking somebody for putting it back.

That song was released originally on the "Back to Skull" EP, but also included as the second track on "John Henry". While the lyrics are what you'd expect of a band like They Might Be Giants, the music is a lot more grungy, and it includes (gasp) a drum solo. So it's understandable that it would provoke such wrath that even the adorable kids on the inside cover are holding a sign saying "We Hate They Might Be Giants".

The "least interesting album" charge leveled by the likes of Pitchfork Media stems from the assumption that the use of a live band makes every song sound completely grungy. And for a lot of the actual grunge albums of that time, the charge would hold.

There's this annoying tendency in music criticism, especially Pitchfork Media, to assume that any time a band changes it's style, that that immediate change will be permanent and every song will sound like that. So when The Decemberists released their rock opera "The Hazards of Love" all the critics acted like they were no longer interested in writing isolated songs, despite the fact that they did exactly that on their follow up album, "The King is Dead". And when they did that, the critics rejoiced that the band had finally seen the error of their ways and had permanently returned to form, despite the fact that it's really a turn to country.

The idea that They Might Be Giant's had become nothing but a grunge band just because of "Snail Shell" is even sillier when one actually listens to the rest of the album. Like this song:

And album that has "O Do Not Forsake Me" and "Snail Shell" can't be the "least interesting" of anything.

It's also worth noting that, while "Snail Shell" was intended as a showcase for the capabilities of the full band, the album opens with a different song, "Subliminal". This song begins with just the accordion, then the drums come in, then the guitars, and then the vocals. So rather than doing away with the trademark They Might Be Giants two-guys-and-an-accordion sound, they were expanding it.

As such, "Subliminal" serves a role similar to "Lovely Joan" on Miranda Sex Garden's "Iris" EP, released the same year, which marked that bands transition from madrigal choir to industrial-goth-metal band.

You may notice that the lyrics to this song reference a car crash. This is true of three other songs on the album: "Sleeping in the Flowers", "AKA Driver" and "The End of the Tour". This thematic unity may cause some to accuse the album of being a bit one-note, but I will have you know that The Magnetic Fields once released an album consisting of sixty-nine songs, all of which were about love.

And it's not like all of the songs are abut car crashes. There's also a song about a spaceship crash. And a song about an exploding thermostat. And some of the songs are about unrelated things entirely, like "Unrelated Thing".

The song that best shows the new range afforded by the live band is a little ditty entitled "A Self Called Nowhere". This song is a loose adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Player Piano. Despite the following fan-made video, it is not about Mario.

Now this is not the most They Might Be Giants-esque songs on the album, although it does include the very They Might Be Giants-esque line "Standing in my yard, where they tore down the garage, to make room for the torn down garage." (Once again, the fact that the album includes a song with that line automatically disqualifies it from being the "least interesting" of anything). But even if it's not typical of They Might Be Giants, it's not typical of anything.

It has a lot of psychedelic stuff, with the trippily surreal chorus and the tape distortions near the end. So it's not grunge. But if it is psychedelia, it's a lot darker than the usual '60s flower-power stuff, with it's images of urban decay and Boston accents. And it's an adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. And it has an acoustic guitar and a horn section.

The brass section is another aspect of "John Henry" that is overlooked. More than the drum machines, what defined early They Might Be Giants musically was their willingness to use random wind instruments, like accordion and clarinet. Although they didn't use a horn section much prior to "John Henry", it plays a big role in preserving the They Might Be Giants sound.

As such the definitive song on "John Henry" is "No One Knows My Plan". It makes full use of both the full band and the horn section. And it features the They Might Be Giants staple of having kind of morbid lyrics accompanied by light-hearted music. It has the staccato instrumental arrangements associated with the band from when they would release songs on Dial-a-Song and didn't want the music to be confused with the answering machine's beep.

Also it has an amusingly literal interpretation of "the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy".

There are songs on the album that are more out there and some that are less. "Thermostat" is in 5/2 time and features some interesting hocketing in the horn section which suggests that They Might Be Giants should totally release an album of Anton Webern covers. Songs like "AKA driver", "Extra Savoir-Faire", "Spy" and "Dirt Bike" are low on the wackiness factor, but have some tight arrangements. "I Should Be Allowed to Think", "Why Must I Be Sad?" and "Stomp Box" exemplify the "grunge" charge to varying degrees but all serve as parodies of '90s rock. "Out of Jail" is a nice cute love song and the 1-minute-long bagatelle "Window" is a worthy successor to the likes of "Minimum Wage" from "Flood".

The two songs most representative of They Might Be Giants are "Meet James Ensor" and "The End of the Tour", which are also the most commonly performed songs from the album in concert. That being said, neither of those songs have ay official or fan-made music video's on YouTube for me to embed, so here is a live version of "Meet James Ensor", and a fan-made cover of "The End of the Tour".

"The End of the Tour" is one of the four "car crash" songs, and the most heartfelt, but it also brings in synthesizers which may remind people of They Might Be Giants of yore. This brings us back to the Bob Dylan analogy. Legend has it, that when Dylan brought electric guitars to the Newport Folk Festival, that Pete Seeger hid in his car and played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" on an acoustic guitar to lament something or other. This is probably a load of hogwash, but it makes for an entertaining legend.

Given They Might Be Giants' reputation for quirkiness, they didn't have a song like that that an enraged Pitchfork Media writer would sing in their locked car while playing their drum machine. As such, it's nice that They Might Be Giants used their change in sound to provide them with a song to play. And it makes a great song for finishing their concerts. And it's just a great song in general.

As for "Meet James Ensor", this is every bit classic old-school They Might Be Giants. It uses a drummer, but he doesn't embellish much, and does play fast enough on the verses it sounds like a human couldn't do it. It's incredibly quirky, detailing the life of "Belgium's famous painter" with lines like "Before there were junk stores, before there was junk, he lived with his mother and the torments of Christ", and it advocates that the listener "dig him up and shake his hand".

This serves to illustrate what makes this an atypical They Might Be Giants album. They Might Be Giants typically seem very happy on the surface, while the lyrics reveal something darker within. "John Henry", wear's its darkness on the outside, with the songs about car crashes, the minor keys and grungy guitar playing. And, of course, the creepy kids in the album artwork. "Meet James Ensor", stays pretty light hearted throughout, which makes it seem somewhat out of place. But if you look at the inside album art, you'll notice the creepy kids are playing with skulls, something inherited from the "Back to Skull" cover. and if you look at the works of James Ensor, you find this:

As I mentioned, "John Henry" is not a typical They Might Be Giants album. If you're just getting into the band for the first time, I would recommend "Apollo 18" as a great album that's a bit more representative of the band as a whole. But "John Henry" is still one of the best.

Check Out This Interview: Inside the Georgia Prison Strike

2011-01-23T21:15:00.005-06:00

You may be familiar with the prisoners' strike that occurred in Georgia in December. Or you may not. Despite being a major week-long non-violent strike of prisoners across six prisons, the event got very little media coverage. What coverage there was tended to be horror stories about (gasp) criminals with cell-phones. The prison officials even classified the carefully organized, non-violent protest as a riot.

But one of those prisoners used his contraband cell-phone to give an interview to Ty Moore of Socialist Alternative. I highly recommend giving it a listen. It gives a great inside view of the conditions in the prison, as well as the steps taken in the strike and the reprisals against the strikers.

You can listen to it here. It's 50 minutes long.

For more information on the strike, I'd recommend the following material:

Two articles by Eljeer Hawkins on the strike:
http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1490
http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1509

And for more extensive coverage, see Bruce A Dixon's blog on Black Agenda Report:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=blog/46

Claiming King

2011-01-17T19:57:00.011-06:00

To day marks the twenty-fifth anniversary Martin Luther King Day becoming a national holiday. More importantly, it's the first time the holiday has been celebrated since Glenn Beck established himself as following in King's footsteps with his "Rally to Restore Honor". This really makes you think about all of the different people of all stripes who claim King as their own. Consider this:

Glenn Beck the paranoid anti-socialist nut-job is claiming to follow in the footsteps of the guy who said "There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism"!

For people who admit Glenn Beck's full of shit there's this bit of outrageousness. Martin Luther King the anti-Vietnam War activist who was hounded by the FBI, is compared by some, to Barack Obama, who instituted a military surge in Afghanistan and had the FBI raid anti-war activists homes in Minneapolis and Chicago!

King's niece, Alveda King, claim's that because she shares Martin Luther King's DNA, he would, like totally agree with her about gay marriage being as bad as genocide. The same Martin Luther King who began his activism under the tutelage of a gay Communist nightclub singer!

The guy who was shot while supporting a sanitation workers' strike, got his own holiday under a bill signed by Ronald Reagan!

And I, an atheist, think that Martin Luther King, a Christian, is a pretty cool guy!

I mean, how crazy is that?!

So I will do the right think and accept that King and I are not, like totally soul mates, while still respecting him as a pretty cool guy, who we can all learn a thing or two from. So let's take a look at said life, shall we?

As with most southern blacks at that time, King came from a family of sharecroppers. However, his father, Martin Luther King Sr. had become a Baptist minister after being inspired by their willingness to stand up for equal rights. King Jr. decided to follow in his father's footsteps, becoming a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

For the Tea Party set, the religious stuff is all that matters. It's especially difficult to claim Martin Luther King as their own while at the same time willingly associating with civil rights opponent Rand Paul. But that doesn't mean they can't try. So they look for the one thing they have in common with the socialist, pro-union, anti-war activist and that is, in the words of Sarah Palin, "a solid rock foundation of faith in the one true God of justice."

It is true that King was a Baptist and used Christian teachings as a basis for his political activities. Do you know who else was a Baptist who used Christian teachings as a basis for his political activities? Strom Thurmond.

Most religious texts, for example, the Bible, are completely full of contradictions, and can be interpreted any way you please, so you can't really claim that the mere faith in the "one 'true' God" is what makes or breaks someone morally. Unless you're Sarah Palin, of course.

It wasn't religion that lead King him to be such an effective activist: it was organized religion. The black churches in the segregated south were one of the few places where black people could congregate freely. So when political tensions rose, that's where the discussions took place. These material conditions radicalized the black churches. But since the churches were organized on religious lines rather than political or class lines, it meant that the churches would eventually act as a break on the civil rights movement, coming into conflict with King himself.

When one looks closer at King's influences, one finds they include a lot more than mere Christianity. He got most of his ideas on political activism from Bayard Rustin, the aforementioned gay Communist nightclub singer.

Rustin was active in the Civil rights movement since the 30s. He was in the Communist Party, but broke with them when the party abandoned civil rights work during World War II as part of their "popular front" with Roosevelt and Churchill. After breaking with the Communist Party, Rustin joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, led by A.J. Muste, a former Trotskyist who led the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike to victory. Muste and Rustin became pacifists, trying to reconcile socialism with the nonviolent resistance tactics of Gandhi. This hodgepodge of ideas is what guided King.

I'll also go ahead and say that the whole nonviolence thing is somewhat overrated. Of course, violence should be avoided whenever possible. There's certainly no need for either militarism or bomb-throwing anarchists and terrorists. But Malcolm X and the Black Panthers did have a point when they argued that violence in self-defense is justified. I'd also say, that the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed in opposition to Kings Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) had a better take on nonviolent protest, seeing it as a tactical principle rather than a moral one. And I doubt most people would seriously oppose, say, the violence of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or the protestors in Tiananmen Square.

But to King's credit, he stuck to his principles. From 1965 he began to speak out against the Vietnam War, at a time when anti-war sentiments weren't yet widespread. This brought King into conflict with other civil rights leaders who wanted to rely on support from Lyndon Johnson, the "best president the Black man ever had". In 1967, king made a famous anti-war speech at the New York Riverside Church, arguing "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death".

Many establishment types who were fine with King's non-violent resistance objected when King started also opposing violent suppression of resistance. For instance, Life magazine called King's speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi".

A lot of King's latter-day soul mates take this same attitude of opposing violent protest, but supporting violent suppression of protests. Since Martin Luther King Day was established, every president has carried out some sort of military campaign, from Nicaragua to Afghanistan. And yet they all claim to find inspiration in King's non-violence. Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize.

But, once again, it's Glenn Beck who takes the cake in hypocrisy regarding non-violence. Last year, a Turkish flotilla was sending humanitarian aid, wheelchairs, food, medicine and the like, to Gaza. The Israeli government was trying to economically paralyze the entire population of Gaza as punishment for electing the wrong party. As a result, Israel sent a team of armed thugs to hijack the boats at gunpoint, resulting in the murder of nine humanitarian aid workers and the theft of the aid and the ships. The humanitarian aid workers didn't bring any weapons with them, so some of them grabbed sticks to disarm the gun-toting paratroopers. They then threw the ammunition overboard and gave medical treatment to the paratroopers for any accidental injuries they may have given them during their stick-attack.

But for Glenn Beck, their willingness to take up (gasp) sticks showed that the humanitarian aid workers cared about nothing but violence. Meanwhile the Israelis who were innocently hijacking a humanitarian aid ship at gunpoint, murdering the passengers and stealing the cargo, were totally peachy. While King's belief in non-violence might cause him to oppose the stick-on-hijacker violence, he certainly wouldn't agree with Beck's support for the hijackers themselves.

There's another aspect of King's belief in non-violent resistance that a lot of people overlook to. Namely, the resistance part. King may have lead non-violent protests, but they were big, disruptive and illegal. When he first came into prominence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he was seen as a radical alternative to the NAACP, who were trying to achieve civil rights by purely legal means. There was no respect for the rule of law, because the rule of law sucked.

In 1963, King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for his civil disobedience campaign. In response to this, eight Birmingham pastors wrote a critique of King called "A Call for Unity", that argued against mass demonstrations and civil disobedience, while praising the Birmingham police for maintaining order. King responded to this with his famous "Letter From a Birmingham Jail".

In later years, he went even further. In his New York Riverside Church anti-war speech, he took up some fiery, even revolutionary, rhetoric:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

Suddenly Beck, Palin and Aveda King don't come off as the inheritors of King's legacy they claim to be. But Jon Stewart shouldn't get to cocky either. While I wasn't there when King gave this speech, I think it's safe to say he didn't use his inside voice.

Of course, it is important to recognize that King, like everyone, evolved over time.

In the early 1960s civil rights groups formed to the left of the SCLC, such as the SNCC and the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), that organized sit-ins and freedom rides. While the SCLC tried to gain the favor with the Democrats, often calling off demonstrations as a sign of reasonableness, the SNCC and CORE were more interested on placing demands than requests.

The Democratic party at this time was trying to position itself as a champion of civil rights in the north while still maintaining racist single-party Jim Crow regimes in the south. When the civil rights movement came into conflict with those regimes, Kennedy and Johnson tried to get the movement to back down. Liberal messiah Bobby Kennedy called for a "cooling off period", to which CORE leader, James Farmer replied, "We've been cooling off for a hundred years. If we got any cooler, we'd be in deep freeze".

Furthermore, other figures, like Malcolm X, were taking on racism in the north, recognizing that the problem wasn't limited to Jim Crow. He also had some cooky nationalist ideas inherited from the Nation of Islam, but provided a pole of attraction for those who were alienated by the mainstream civil rights leadership. He also moved away from nationalism in a socialist direction after breaking with the Nation of Islam.

But going into the 1960s, King became further radicalized, heading in the same socialist direction. His criticism of the Vietnam War brought on the wrath of the Democratic party, with Lyndon Johnson claiming King's speech "had the same effect on [him] as if he had discovered that King had raped his daughter". Meanwhile, King was starting to feel the limits of the SCLC's strategy. This culminated when King was booed by radical youth on a tour of Chicago ghettoes, and realized he was becoming out of touch, saying:

"I went home that night with an ugly feeling . . . for twelve years I, and others like me had held out radiant promises of progress. Their hopes had soared. They were booing because they felt we were unable to deliver on our promises."

"The struggle" he said, "was in a different phase in which Negroes sought an end to economic exploitation and racism itself."

In 1968, King launched the Poor People's Campaign. It was still based on non-violent resistance, but instead of a pure civil rights campaign it was meant to be a "broad attack against class-based economic and social discrimination of which Negroes were the worst victims, but not the only victims", and would demand "the nationalization of vital industries, guaranteed income for impoverished Americans and an end to the slums". You know, the stuff that Glenn Beck hates.

And before Barack Obama gets too cocky, when King talked about "the nationalization of vital industries", he meant taking them under public ownership, not giving massive bail-outs to their CEOs.

Anyway, this campaign put strain between King and the rest of the SCLC. While King moved to the left, Bayard Rustin moved to the right, and resigned from the campaign. But most of them still went along with it, because King had enough prestige it was hard to turn down. The intended launching of the campaign was a Sanitation workers' strike in Memphis.

This is, of course, where King was assassinated. The leadership of the SCLC continued the campaign in his honor, but didn't know what to do with the Poor People's Campaign. King's official successor, Ralph Abernathy shifted his focus to things like protesting the moon landing and moved to the right to the point of endorsing Reagan in 1980.

Jesse Jackson led a split to the left, starting People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), which had some watered down versions of the Poor People's Campaign's demands. In the 80s Jackson rebranded PUSH as the Rainbow Coalition, which was focused on campaigning for Democratic politicians and occasionally boycotting companies that didn't hire enough black people.

It's hard to say what would have happened had King not been assassinated. There was talk of King running in the 1968 presidential election under the Peace and Freedom Party. King turned down the offer and Benjamin Spock ran instead, but it's possible that he would have reconsidered in 1972.

Maybe King would have moved even farther to the left and acted as a pole of attraction for the New Left. Maybe he would have moved to the right, like Rustin and Abernathy and Jackson and ended up supporting the Democrats.

It's even possible that he would have become a crazed right-wing libertarian paranoiac who was totally in love with Glenn Beck.

But probably not.

The Gospel According to Phil

2010-12-28T19:35:00.003-06:00

You know, Jesus is a pretty strange guy. I mean, a lot of mythological figures can be strange, but it's usually something overt and basic, like having a dog's head or throwing lightning bolts from the sky. Once you can wrap you're head around one or two contradictions the Gods just like you and I. But then there's Jesus. Ignoring all the supernatural water-into-wine stuff, this is a Jew who was killed by the Jews as a collective mass. He said "love thy neighbor" but his followers were responsible for the crusades. Not to mention this is a guy who exorcised one Gadarene Demoniac or two Gadarene Demoniacs depending on who you talk to.

Fortunately Philip Pullman is here to set matters straight. In his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, he presents a retelling of the gospel, and provides the only rational explanation for all this silliness. Jesus and Christ were two different people! Furthermore they were identical twins!

For some clarification, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was written as part of the Canongate Myth Series. This is a series of novels by different authors that about assorted ancient myths. Most of these are about things like Greek, Egyptian and Norse myths, and other beliefs that are no longer practiced by modern religion. However two of the entries, this and Lion's Honey by David Grossman, deal with modern religion as folklore.

Philip Pullman is best known as the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, which was at least partly intended as an atheist response to the Chronicles of Narnia. So it's understandable he would take a similar approach in the Canongate Myth Series.

In other senses, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is very different from His Dark Materials. For one, it's really short. It forgoes immersive world-building in favor of a more fairy-tale-style storytelling. Also, while the fantasy in His Dark Materials obeys an internal logic in such a way that it almost comes off as science fiction, the fantasy in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is unabashedly fantasy. Given the source material, this is understandable.

The book posits Mary having twins, named Jesus and Christ. Jesus, the aforementioned "good man", takes on the role of the perfect hippy guy, who gives weird parables and doesn't care much for the Romans and never sins. Christ, the aforementioned "scoundrel" is the guy who writes the gospels, altering it to please the soon-to-be-established church, who wants to punish sinners while sinning himself.

I should point out that the book isn't entirely taking a "Jesus good Christ bad" position. Jesus is the character who insists that people take things on faith, while Christ wants to draw attention to all the water-into-wine stuff as proof of Jesus's divinity. And Christ doesn't do his acts out of evil, so much as compromise and human imperfection.

During the middle of the book, Christ even comes off as the more sympathetic character. For instance, during Jesus's speech on the mount, when he's explaining the need for silent prayer, he temporarily turns into a Nazarene Carlos Mencia, saying things like "and have you ever heard the Gentiles pray? On and on, yakkety yak, blah blah blah, as if the very sound of their voices were music in the ears of God. Don't be like them. There's no need to tell God what you're asking for; he knows already." (Don't worry, the rest of the book isn't like that).

During this section, it almost makes it seem like the old, warn-out equation of religion with fanaticism and reason with moderation and compromise that a lot of atheists like to make, myself excluded. But nearer the end of the book, it becomes clearer that the Jesus and Christ characters are two sides of the same coin. And ultimately Christ does some pretty nasty things and starts to regret his acts.

One of my favorite parts of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is also one of the most cringe-inducingly awful parts of the Book of John, namely the stuff with pilate. In Pullman's version, Pilate was dead-set on having Jesus crucified, but there was this pesky custom the Romans had of freeing one prisoner on Passover, determined by popular opinion. To make sure this didn't happen to Jesus, Pilate sent agents provocateurs into the crowd to make sure they chose the murderer Barabbas instead. And Christ, in order to establish a powerful church with Roman, backing, conveniently ignored the agents provocateurs part in writing things down.

This is great for several reasons. First of all, it's a clever twist on all that anti-Semitic "The Jews killed Jesus" nonsense. Also, it rectifies the hardest instance in the Jesus myth for one to willingly suspend disbelief. The supernatural stuff is all par for the course in religious stuff. There's mistaken historical stuff: (seriously, you're supposed to go to your ancestors' birthplace for the census? Man, the 2010 census-takers must be searching all over Kälviä for me!). That doesn't make much sense, but can be explained away by saying primitive people had strange customs, even if they didn't really have those customs. But in the whole Pilate stuff, the characters motivations made no sense whatsoever, until now.

And there's another thing. In explaining his decision to separate Jesus and Christ, Pullman said we wanted to write "a story about how stories become stories". A lot of the contradictions in the Bible come from the mere fact that it's a religious text. But a lot of them also arise from the fact that the Bible was written by different people with different agendas. The Pilate scene in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ best captures this.

For more on the different competing forces involved in writing the bible, one should check out Karl Kautsky's 1908 book Foundations of Christianity. In the time in which Jesus allegedly lived (fun fact: Jesus never existed), the Nazarene sect of Judaism was, for all practical purposes, a real-life version of the People's Front of Judea from The Life of Brian. So in those days, you get all of the class warfare going on, and all the stuff about sharing your wealth.

But, while the early Nazarenes shared the goods they owned they didn't share in the means of production, operating like a hippie co-op rather than an all-out commune. As such they were dependent on recruiting wealthy people to survive, and ultimately became dependent on them. Thus the early gospels say "blessed are the poor" while the later gospels say "blessed are the poor in spirit". Also, the wealthy people tended to be Romans, so you go from books like Matthew, that slavishly repeat all those long lists of "begats" in order to show how Jewish they were, to books like John that blame the Jews for the death of Jesus and absolve the Romans.

And that's how you end up with a religion so full of contradictions that it can include among its practitioners Adolph Hitler and Martin Luther King.

Given the fairy-tale-like structure of the books, and probably given Pullman's own views, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, doesn't get to the same level of detail as Kautsky's book. Pullman's conclusion is a bit vaguer, focusing on how we shouldn't look to the divine for moral guidance. But he gets far more good points in there than most retellings of the gospel. And he still tells a good story, marking quite an improvement over the original.

Edifice of Lies — WikiLeaks Pulls Back the Curtain on U.S. Empire

2010-12-16T20:38:00.005-06:00

An article I co-wrote with Brandon Madsen for Socialist Alternative.

On Tuesday, December 7, Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks, was arrested after turning himself in to the Metropolitan Police Service in London. This is the latest in a series of attacks on the organization. The WikiLeaks website has been subjected to denial-of-service attacks. Corporations such as Amazon and PayPal have cut off services to WikiLeaks, while financial institutions such as MasterCard and Visa have been freezing their accounts. Whistleblower Bradley Manning was arrested in May, and faces a military court-martial and up to 52 years in prison.

WikiLeaks was launched in 2007 and provides secure, anonymous methods for individuals to leak sensitive information to journalists, generally in the form of original source documents. This July brought the massive and unprecedented release of over 90,000 incident records and intelligence reports chronicling the Afghanistan War from 2004 to 2009. On October 23 this was followed up with the even larger release of almost 400,000 classified U.S. documents about the war in Iraq.

Taken as a whole, the nearly 500,000 documents, along with the over 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables currently being released as a result of the latest “mega-leak” paint a grim picture of a U.S. military that is both violently dishonest and hopelessly bogged down in a bloody, unwinnable crisis. But rather than addressing the issues squarely, the U.S. government has turned its attention to attacking WikiLeaks and preventing further embarrassments.

Some pro-war politicians, such as Peter King and Mitch McConnell have hypocritically accused WikiLeaks of endangering the troops by revealing government secrets. But it is their support for imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that has caused the years of horrific bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the Bush administration that made fallacious claims of the existence of weapons of mass destruction that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives being lost in Iraq. Had WikiLeaks existed then, these lies could have been exposed, and countless lives could have been saved.

Sex crimes and “espionage”

The latest turn of events came with the arrest of Julian Assange for alleged sex crimes committed in August 2010 in Sweden. The alleged crimes consist of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape. Assange claims that the dispute arose from incidents of consensual but unprotected sex. However, the prosecution accuses Assange of having unprotected sex with a woman who was asleep. He has been granted bail but remains in custody in London and faces possible extradition to Sweden.

These are serious charges, not to be taken lightly. If there’s any validity to the charges, they should be investigated. However, the manner in which the investigation has been conducted makes it difficult to take the charges at face value. Shortly after the investigation began, chief prosecutor Eva Finné overturned the charges and withdrew the arrest warrant, arguing: “I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” (Dagens Nyheter, 11/3/10). However, the investigation was re-opened due to the intervention of high-profile Swedish politician Claes Borgström.

He has also not yet been charged with any crime, and is simply wanted in Sweden for questioning related to the charges. Nonetheless, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issued a red notice against him, under which he was arrested. Interpol has never shown any interest in violence against women. Considering how many sexual assaults occur with actual charges being pressed, it’s highly suspicious that Interpol would use this case as the basis for an international man-hunt. All this suggests that the British and Swedish governments, under pressure from the U.S., are more interested in launching a witch-hunt against Assange and WikiLeaks than actually taking steps to prevent violence against women.

This is certainly the case with the U.S. government, which is attempting to have Assange extradited to the U.S. for charges of espionage related to the exposures on WikiLeaks. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has called on Assange to be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. This is a vaguely-worded law that was instituted under Woodrow Wilson to suppress opposition to World War I. It was notoriously used in the 1918 arrest of socialist activist Eugene Debs, for making an anti-war speech that “obstructed recruiting.”

Feinstein is pressing for a ten-year prison sentence for each leak, which would result in a total sentence of 2,500,000 years in prison. Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder said that American officials were conducting “a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature” into the WikiLeaks releases (New York Times, 12/8/10). Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Scott Brown (R-MA) and John Ensign (R-NE), have introduced legislation that would criminalize all media outlets that publish WikiLeaks documents.

These measures represent a serious attack on free speech and freedom of information. As such, they must be unequivocally opposed. Whatever the motivations are behind the Swedish sex crimes charges, the fact that the U.S. government would use these charges as a lever to attack freedom of information is shameful.

The real crime: civilian deaths and torture

The hysteria of the U.S. and world governments in their attacks on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks reveals serious hypocrisy when one considers the revelations in the leaks themselves. Unfortunately the U.S. government and media have been able to use the Swedish charges as a means of distracting attention from very real, documented crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is worth looking at the incidents revealed in these leaks.

One thing that pops out almost immediately is the fact that the U.S. government lied through their teeth in saying that civilian deaths were kept to a minimum, and that they did not record how many civilian deaths had taken place. The documents indicate that between 2004 and 2009 hundreds of violent civilian deaths were recorded in Afghanistan, and more than 66,000 in Iraq, but they were never reported publicly. Undoubtedly, even these numbers represent only a fraction of the civilian deaths that likely took place, but even by the U.S. military’s own recorded numbers, this is nearly three times the number of “enemy” deaths in the same period (23,984).

This should come as no surprise given the leak of the “Collateral Murder” video early this year, also released through WikiLeaks, which showed a group of Iraqi men and what turned out to be two Reuters journalists in Baghdad being purposefully bombarded by U.S. Apache helicopters on July 12, 2007, resulting in all of their deaths. This was followed by additional footage of the killing of a group of unarmed men together with their children carrying away another unarmed, wounded man to safety. Regardless of the intentions of the soldiers involved, these acts clearly constituted a violation of the rules of engagement, given that none of the targeted individuals were acting in a hostile manner whatsoever.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out at the time, “there’s a serious danger when incidents like this Iraq slaughter are exposed in a piecemeal and unusual fashion: namely, the tendency to talk about it as though it is an aberration. It isn’t. It’s the opposite: it’s par for the course, standard operating procedure, what we do in wars, invasions and occupations.” (Salon.com 4/6/10)

Greenwald’s position is supported both by the new evidence and by the video itself, in which soldiers in the helicopter received permission to engage before they had reported anything that would indicate the people being bombed posed an immediate threat.

Also, as if the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in 2004 wasn’t enough (another case that the military has dishonestly tried to paint as “a few bad apples”), it seems that torture just as bad or perhaps even worse was allowed to continue in Iraq under the watch of the U.S. military, as long as it was Iraqi authorities and security forces carrying it out. A fragmentary order (or “frago” – an order that alters an existing order) made it explicit that cases of “Iraqi on Iraqi abuse” required “no further investigation.” Incidents of torture suggested in the documents include using electrocution, electric drills, and occasionally executing detainees. (bbc.co.uk 10/23/10)

Official public response

The political backlash following these leaks has been profound, with the whole of the political establishment roundly condemning the leak and threatening severe legal retribution against those involved. Some conservatives in the U.S. have gone even further, such as a Fox News commentator who called for WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange to be treated as a “prisoner of war.” Former State Department official Christian Whiton said that the whole WikiLeaks staff should be classified as “enemy combatants” and ominously advocated for “non-judicial action” against them. An editorial in the Washington Times said the U.S. government should be “waging war on the WikiLeaks web presence,” and similar statements have appeared on the website of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). (The Independent, 10/27/10)

22-year-old Private First Class Bradley E. Manning – already charged as the prime suspect in the release of the “Collateral Murder” video as well as video of another airstrike and the latest leak of 250,000 diplomatic cables – has also been classified as a “person of interest” with regards to the Afghanistan War Logs. On the existing charges alone he could face up to 52 years in prison if convicted.

While these attacks on the documents’ leakers are underway, the Obama administration has simultaneously tried to explain away the significance of the documents, using the laughably disingenuous argument that the documents only cover the period of time before the surge took place, whereas now the war is going great. They have also received a bit of cover from The Times of London, which summarized that “[o]ver all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war.” More recently, Obama has released a joint statement with Mexican President Felipe Calderón that condemned “the deplorable actions by WikiLeaks” regarding new leaks about the war on drugs. (New York Times, 12/11/10)

The frantic efforts to suppress these leaks and their significance go against all promises of “transparency” from the Obama administration. The truth is, the government relies on secrecy as its key tool with which to prop up support for the war, and that’s why they’re so eager to go after the people leaking these documents.

Fittingly, this is confirmed by U.S. Army and CIA documents previously leaked by WikiLeaks, which deal with the need to destroy WikiLeaks and how to artificially prop up support for the Afghanistan War in France and Germany. These have section headings literally titled things like “Public Apathy Allows Leaders to Ignore Voters.” In another related section, titled “Why Counting on Apathy May Not Be Enough,” the CIA document outlines other key strategies for propping up support for the war like using Afghan women to make public pro-war statements to play on the sympathy of the French people towards Afghan refugees. It also points out the usefulness of Barack Obama as a pretty face for the war, and someone European populations are more likely to trust. (Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com 3/27/10)

Going after the leakers of these documents has nothing to do with protecting regular people’s security, as many in the political establishment have claimed, but rather has everything to do with “perception management” (to again quote the CIA). For the rest of us, these leakers should be regarded as heroes who are risking their lives to get this crucial information into the hands of the public. These documents can and should be spread far and wide to expose the ruthlessness and futility of the wars, and should be a spur to renew efforts to organize to stop them immediately.

100 Music Videos, Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

2010-12-05T19:38:00.004-06:00

And so "100 Music Videos" comes to an end. We've gone from '80s synth-pop to Finnish black metal to Australian hip-hop. We've seen works by such acclaimed directors as Tarsem Singh, Michel Gondry, Lars Von Trier, Richard Lester and Spike Lee (and we'll get some Spike Jonze in this installment). We've had a re-imagining of Metropolis and a documentay about the making of Easy Rider. And on occasion, we have had nudity. And meat. And eggs.

For our final installment, we will have Mexican fairy tales and Russian paranoid visions. We'll see a band do their take on a classic '70s sit-com and another band do their take on a classic '60s music video. And the epic battle between XTC and Adam Ant that started in our first installment will conclude in this one. Also, a low-budget goth klezmer birthday song.

So I bid you adieu. Or is it au revoir?

91. Julieta Venegas – Limón y Sal

It’s a tale as old as time. Girl meets wolf. Girl falls in love with wolf. But wolf has a secret. He’s no ordinary wolf. He’s a (gasp) werewolf! Girl pursues her relationship with wolf completely unaware that, during a full moon, wolf will turn into (gasp) a man!!! Then a unicorn, a drum-playing elephant, an evil sorcerer and some pigs show up and do exactly what's expected of them. Somehow or other, lemon and salt gets figured into the plot. At least I think it does because the song is called “limón y sal” which I think means “lemon and salt” but I don’t speak Spanish, so I could be wrong about that.

92. Voltaire – Happy Birthday (My Olde Friend) [dir. Voltaire]

Goth musicians have an easier time than other genres at making good low-budget music videos. Since everybody they know has a crazy costume, you can just have them all show up and hang out. If you’re doing a goth klezmer video it’s even easier, since you have all that Hasidic garb, which looks a lot like goth garb anyway.

For Voltaire’s goth klezmer birthday song the cheapness of the video actually helps it. Since the birthday ~~boy~~ corpse is a dummy that in no way resembles an actual human being. That way anybody can substitute themselves for the birthday corpse. This makes "Happy Birthday (My Olde Friend)" the definitive low-budget goth klezmer birthday video, perfect for all low-budget goth klezmer birthday festivities.

93. Weezer – Buddy Holly [dir. Spike Jonze]

These days Weezer has become a bit of a joke, shamelessly putting empty gimmicks over content. But back in the good old days, they did empty gimmicks with class! I mean, they got the director of Being John Malkovich to do their empty gimmicks. Goddamit. It’s the ’10s and I’m getting nostalgic for a ’90s music video that was itself peddling in nostalgia for a ’70s TV show that was peddling in ’50s nostalgia. You know, back in the ’50s everybody was probably reminiscing about the great depression.

94. Wir Sind Helden – Nur ein Wort [dir. Greifer & Krötenbluth]

Wir Sind Helden - Nur Ein Wort
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Hey, you know that music video that Bob Dylan did for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”? You, know, the one from earlier in the list? That was awesome, man! And you know that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Timescape”, where time keeps speeding up and slowing down and going backwards? You know, where Picard draws the smiley face on the warp core breech? That was awesome, man! And you know that language, German? Well, what if somebody found a way to combine those three things? That would be, like super-awesome! You know what would make it super-awesomer? If they also included a cute geeky chick!

95. Wolf Parade – I’ll Believe in Anything [dir. Matt Moroz]

Fun fact: “Matt Moroz” is actually a pseudonym for Stanley Kubrick. It was supposed to be the successor to Eyes Wide Shut, but he died with only enough material to fill a music video, so some of the actors formed a band with the intent of making said video. Unlike that Adam and the Ants video from earlier in the list, Kubrick paid strict attention to period detail. Like Kubrick’s other period pieces, he insisted on, not only having exact period costumes, but on not using modern electric lights, which is why the colors seem a bit off.

When you have that attention to detail it can bring out interesting facts about the time you might not have otherwise noticed. For instance, it might seem a bit weird for the band to have such poorly groomed facial hair in the video. But’s that’s actually perfectly accurate, because in the 18th century they had different standards for social acceptability for the British nobility than they did for the Canadian indie rock bands.

I did notice one minor mistake, though Kubrick would have likely fixed that had he made the full movie. In the climactic final duel, if you look very closely, the weapons they’re using aren’t really 18th century dueling pistols, but are, in fact, cannons.

96. Toki Wright – By the Time I Get to Arizona 2010

When the state of Arizona passed the nauseatingly awful Senate Bill 1070, that lets cops arrest people for looking like illegal immigrants, country-singer Ray Stevens made an even more nauseatingly awful music video for his anti-immigrant song “Come to the USA”. Also around that time, Minneapolis rapper Toki Wright released this video.

I would like to point out that the Ray Stevens video features the guy singing with himself, while this has Toki Wright with a large immigrants rights demonstration. Stevens may have gotten more views on YouTube, but Wright’s supporters walk the walk.

Also, at the 3:54 mark, Hi, Nick.

97. XTC – Dear God [dir. Nick Brandt]

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You know, for a band that describes its style as “Beatle-based pop” it’s, well, uh, pretty accurate. Lennon-esque lyrics with McCartney-esque music. One sense in which it’s not Beatle-based, the video is largely devoid of skiing. But what it lack in skiing shenanigans it makes up for in depictions of a guy hitting an incredibly symbolic tree with a hammer.

I’d have to say more music videos should feature incredibly symbolic trees. I really like the camera work in this video, the way it pans up the incredibly symbolic tree to show the incredibly symbolic people sitting in it. And the backwards camera-work looks like things are actually being unbroken. More importantly, it just matches the mood of the song. They complement each other so well, it almost makes it look like hitting trees with a hammer is somehow normal.

98. “Weird” Al Yankovic – White & Nerdy [dir. “Weird” Al Yankovic]

The idea of taking a well-known rap song about gangstas and changing it to be about how nerdy you are is something that's been around long enough that I was somewhat weary of the whole idea when I learned about this song. But Weird Al was so clever with his lyrics, completely matching Chamillionaire's odd rhythms, and kept up the quality production that it continues to work even after the novelty has faded.

The video provides an extra dimension to it as well. You once again have great production values, like the song. But there's also the moment at the end when Weird Al meets up with the gangstas to get an illegal bootleg copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special. It's a touching moment of understanding and an acknowledgment that everybody is gonna roll with the gangstas sometimes.

Oh, and in answer to your question, you know the only one you thought was hard: Picard > Sisko > Kirk > Janeway > Archer > Pike > Ömer the Tourist > Chris Pine.

99. Neil Young – Rockin’ in the Free World

This song became an anthem for the collapse of Stalinism, back in the day, mostly thanks to its fist-pumping "Keep on rockin' in the free world" chorus. Of course, the somewhat less-fist-pumping verses portrayed a somewhat more ambiguous picture of the world, one that people were all too happy to ignore (See also, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA"). Fortunately the video puts that ambiguity to the front and center, serving as a sobering reminder that everything was not coming up roses and daffodils. Maybe if he had released the video earlier, we could have been spared shock treatment.

100. Zemfira – Paranoia [dir. E.T.]

So, we’ve come to the final video, and I know what you’re all wondering: “How could you have gone through the entire list without including any Tartan rock?” Well, I apologize for that and instead provide the next best thing: Bashkir rock!

The song is about insanity, which means you can do pretty much whatever you want in the video, but they still put some effort into it. Three-bladed scissors?! Those things creep me out. And then there's drawing the crazy symbols on the floor, and having it turn out to be a hopscotch course. But the trippiest part is, of course the Adam and Eve characters hiding in the walls. No computer effects or anything. Just paint them in weird patters and paint the walls in the same weird patterns.

It also has a nice ending in which she starts watching the music video that we just finished. It's like looking at a gateway into your own psyche if someone made a music video about it.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega

2010-12-04T19:29:00.006-06:00

As we near the end of "100 Music Videos", I thought I would share a bit about my "MTV phase" in middle school. Up until 1994 I didn't really pay attention to MTV or music videos or modern rock in general, being more into the Beatles. But then I saw this amazing music video. The song was sort of Beatles-esque psychedelia, but harder, so that was nice. But the video had groundbreaking special effects that just completely wowed me. The song: Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun".

So, naturally, when I was working out what videos to include in this list, that was one of the obvious choices and I went to view it on YouTube. Well the thing about groundbreaking special effects from 1994, is, uh, well, they're not so ground breaking anymore. Also, did you know that, beneath its shiny, clean-cut exterior, suburbia has a dark side? Well I still got a nostalgia kick, but declined to include the video, because I don't think that anybody who wasn't in middle school in 1994 will be able to appreciate it. However, I did include a video by Tool that has groundbreaking special effects from 2001.

So here goes.

81. Todd Snider – You Got Away With It (A Tale of Two Fraternity Brothers)

It’s that twist that really gets you. We’ve got our country singer reminiscing about his past as a rich fratboy to an old fellow-rich-fratboy friend of his. He goes on all about the nasty shit they did and got away with because they were rich fratboys. And we get our flashbacks of fratboys doing fratboy things and behaving in a manner that could charitably be described as horrible and uncharitably be described as Chris-Pine-esque.

But then the twist comes and it turns out the fratboy he’s singing to/about is none other than (gasp) George W. Bush! And he’s still getting away with shit!

82. Regina Spektor – Fidelity [dir. Marc Webb]

regina spektor - Fidelity
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I've been reluctant to get into Regina Spektor because she willingly identifies with the "genre" known as "anti-folk". Just the idea of giving a genre a name that identifies itself as being the opposite of another genre is the height of musical dickishness (see also "no wave"). Especially since anti-folk is generally regarded as a subgenre of folk rather than it's antithesis. The only name more dickish than "anti-folk" is "post-nü-anti-folkwavecore" which thankfully doesn't exist.

However, this video has won me over. The stylized furniture, the invisible boyfriend in the black-and-white striped clothes, the swing, all perfect. And of course, when your invisible boyfriend in black-and-white striped clothes in a stylized black-and-white room stops being invisible, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't celebrate by having a dry tempera paint fight. Once they're rolling around in the dry paint, all is forgiven.

83. System of a Down – B.Y.O.B. [dir. Jake Nava]

One of the neat things about System of a Down’s music is the way they keep shifting between manic, thrashy shouting and slower, more melodic Armenian folk stuff. And this video puts that style to its best use, as you have the escapist party-goers ignoring all the fascist stormtroopers outside. This is all connected to the song title which means both “Bring Your Own Beer” and “Bring Your Own Bombs”. Though come to think of it, I was unaware of the second meaning until I read the Wikipedia entry on this song, so they could have just made that up.

84. Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime [dir. Toni Basil & David Byrne]

I’ve determined that the fundamental appeal of new wave dancing is in the idea that if a whole bunch of people do the exact same dance move at the same time it will look awesome no matter how awkward the dance move is. This is sort of a case in point. One David Byrne flailing around like an epileptic puppet? That’s kind of silly. Multiple David Byrne’s flailing around like multiple epileptic puppets? That’s sublimely silly.

85. Tegan and Sara – Hell [dir. Jamie Travis]

Tegan and Sara - Hell from Catherine Lutes on Vimeo.

The trick to making truly great music videos is for your band to be a set of identical twins. Just put one of them in vertical stripes and the other in horizontal stripes and you have music video gold.

It’s like the came Set. Either everything is completely the same or completely different. The stripes are the same color and thickness but in different directions. The pants are the same design but one pair is yellow and the other purple. The hotel rooms are mirror images in different colors. They both get visions form a creepy mutant, but one sees it in the mirror, the other in the TV.

But the best part is where they do the fades between vertical-stripe chick and horizontal-stripe chick (don’t ask me which one is Tegan and which one is Sara. White people all look the same, especially when they’re identical twins.) But for a brief moment in the fade it looks like one hybrid Tegansara in a plaid shirt. Every band should consist of identical twins.

86. Tenacious D – Tribute [dir. Liam Lynch]

So let's say you're in a heavy metal band. But the heavy metal band consists of two out-of-shape guys with an acoustic guitar. But you still persevere and become the heaviest of all acoustic heavy metal bands out there, even if only by being the only one. But then you want to make a music video. What do you do? You go to one of those make-your-own-video karaoke things in a mall, but make it the most bad-ass make-your-own-video karaoke thing ever performed by an acoustic heavy metal band. And maybe in post-production you can put in some cheap green-screen effects. But make sure they're the most awesome cheap green-screen effects ever used in a make-your-own-video karaoke thing by an acoustic heavy metal band! Yeah!!!

87. They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul [dir. Adam Bernstein]

This has got to be one of coolest music video of all time! It’s like they thought of all of the coolest things in existence: bicycles, protestors, plaid shirts, the illuminati and, of course, weird dimmer switches that make one light get brighter as it makes another dimmer! And then they said: “You know, we can combine all these awesome things by putting them in a music video together!” And that’s exactly what they did!

88. Tool – Parabola [dir. Adam Jones]

Progressive rock lends itself so well to music videos that it’s somewhat surprising that there aren’t more of them. If you just look at any random prog rock cover, it’ll probably look like something from a music video. And the tendency of prog rockers to write long, epic songs is somewhat more suited for visual imagery. Of course, the height of prog was a decade before MTV, so you don’t get to see any 20-minute “Tarkus” videos.

Fortunately, Tool exists. I don’t know if there’s supposed to be a story in this video, or if its just random surrealism, but it sure is awesome either way. The lyrics say something about it being a parable, but, more importantly, the symmetry group of the apple core changes each time they zoom in! That’s fucked, man! And that’s only the beginning.

89. Urker – Tugan Elim

I’ll be upfront with you and admit that I don’t speak Kazakh, so I’m not entirely sure what this song is about. But judging by the video, I assume it’s an incredibly moving commentary on the rise of Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome in Kazakhstan. Or it’s about the circle of life. Or maybe both.

All that new agey circle-of-life depictions of rapidly aging nomads and horsies running across the steppes of central Asia is one thing. But what makes the video special is that the members of the band are wearing industrial tech-geek clothes. So, in a way, it’s society that’s suffering from Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.

90. Suzanne Vega – Tired of Sleeping [dir. Tarsem Singh]

Suzanne Vega - Tired Of Sleeping
Uploaded by jpdc11. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

And there was the singer Suzanne Vega, who was tired of sleeping. And there was the accordionist John Linnell who might, or might not, be a giant. And they didn't care too much for Governor Odious either. Okay, so this doesn’t have the same obsessive symbolism as Tarsem’s other stuff. It’s kind of neat that he can shoot a gritty black-and-white take on the difficulties of aging as well as convoluted fantasy stuff. Granted, you still get a bike-riding angel and a floating guy but, by Tarsem standards, that’s downright verismo.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins

2010-12-03T19:41:00.008-06:00

I believe it was Jon Stewart who said "Have you ever seen Scent of a Woman . . . on weed?!" Well, if Jon Stewart reads my blog, then this installment of "100 Music Videos" is probably the blog entry he would advocate reading . . . on weed! This will be the entry where a bunch of naked cyclists is the least trippy thing going on.

Along the way we will have a video from the director of The Fall followed by a video from the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. We have a video about people's eyes preceded by a band made of giant eyeballs. We've got space adventures and supermarket adventures and mountain adventures. And then there's video number 79.

So go forth and watch . . . on weed!

71. Pulp – Common People

That’s the thing about the common people. They really like disco dancing, but they’re not very good at it.

Okay, so the bad dancing was an homage to the “Eleanor Rigby” bit from the Yellow Submarine movie. But the disco stuff does get at an issue worth addressing. A lot of people these days, Rodney Atkins for instance, like to promote that romanticized vision of “common people” where “the fences need fixin’, the peaches need pickin’ and the cows need bringin’ round.” But these people would likely exclude Jarvis Cocker from the “common people” solely on the basis of him being a skinny disco-dancing pansy.

But, as the song shows, it’s not all that romantic nonsense that makes you part of the common people. You can be part of the common people whether you’re an effete Brit with emo hair or an Iowa farmboy. It’s the less romantic stuff that makes you common.

72. Queen – Bicycle Race [dir. Dennis de Vallance]

WARNING: This video contains nudity/poor bicycle safety.

Back in the pre-MTV days, a lot of British music videos were connected with the “Top of the Pops” show. These videos were trying to replicate a live performance, but recorded in a studio so you don’t have to worry about messing up. The result is that most of these videos aren’t very interesting.

Most of Queen’s videos came from this process. But when they got to “Bicycle Race”, it occurred to them that, if they weren’t actually doing a live show, they could put pretty much anything into the video. Anything!

73. R.E.M. – Losing My Religion [dir. Tarsem Singh]

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
Uploaded by WBRNewMedia. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

And there was the scantily clad boy, who was tied to a pole and shot with arrows. Arrows fired by Governor Odious. And there was the fallen angel. But did he fall or was he pushed? Pushed, by Governor Odious. And there was the old guy with the gaping stomach wound. A wound inflicted by Governor Odious. And there was Michael Stipe, the Indian, the ex-slave and the British naturalist Charles Darwin, with his pet monkey Wallace. And together, they all vowed revenge against Governor Odious.

74. Radiohead – Knives Out [dir. Michel Gondry]

radiohead - knives out from amnesiac on Vimeo.

Esteemed film critic Michael D’Angelo once argued that the practice of long tracking shots is to the detriment of filmmaking. Part of his argument hinged on some post-modern nonsense about how perception is reality and so all films should have jump cuts to represent blinking. To this, I say “What?”

But the main thrust of his argument was that having long unbroken takes was a distraction. People would be too busy thinking about how it was filmed, asking questions like “How did they get those microwaves around Thom Yorke’s feet when we weren’t looking?” and “How did they get the video within the video within the video to sync up so well” and “How did they fit an entire room full of people underneath Thom Yorke’s covers and get them to act on queue?” According to D’Angelo, these nagging questions distract the audience from the content of the movie, in this case, a song about a cat eating a mouse or something like that. To this, I say “So?”

75. Rage Against the Machine – Bulls on Parade [dir. Peter Christopherson]

Here you've got distorted concert footage, mixed in with stock videos of people getting attacked by and/or attacking the police, as well as some graffiti-style slogans. All in all, what you'd expect from Rage Against the Machine. It makes it look like an underground newsreel. But then you have all those shots of the guys with flags marching across a mountain, and things take a turn for the strange. But somehow it all goes together.

76. Rammstein – Amerika [dir. Jörn Heitmann]

After Columbine, everybody started accusing Rammstein of being Nazis, and they faded from the public consciousness, but they continued to make music. Conscious of the accusations, they wrote the song "Links 234" which included the lyrics "My heart beats on the left", to clarify their political views. By 2004, the Iraq war had politicized everyone, and Rammstein became sort of an industrial metal version of Naomi Klein, albeit funnier. This is the result of that transformation.

77. The Residents – Burn Baby Burn

Watching this video, you may come to the conclusion that it is, maybe, possibly, a little bit on the strange side. This is understandable, since it’s by a band whose members hide their identities and wear giant eyeball masks and tuxes. However, in this case, the Residents themselves aren’t to blame for the weirdness.

That’s because the song is based on the bible. Specifically, it’s based on the story of Jephthah, who prayed to God for a military victory. He said that if he won, he would sacrifice the first thing he saw when he got back home. So he won and, when he got back, his daughter was waiting at the door to congratulate him. So really, this video is God’s fault, not the Residents’. Unless . . . what if one of the Residents is God underneath that giant eyeball?

78. Siouxsie and the Banshees – Peek-A-Boo [dir. John Mathieson]

I’m a bit conflicted about this video. On the one hand, it’s a catchy song with a neat arrangement and kick-ass goth imagery. And, of course, it’s got Siouxsie Sioux in it, so that’s a plus.

On the other hand, the song is supposed to be a critique of the conformity and beauty-obsessed attitude of the media. Since the goth scene had its own form of conformity and beauty-obsession, just with different make-up, it comes of as a bit disingenuous. Especially since Siouxsie Sioux is pretty conventionally attractive. Isn’t this precisely what Jhonen Vasquez was making fun of with the Anne Gwish character in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac?

On the other other hand, the back-up musicians in the plague-era bird masks include an accordionist and a serpent. Okay, I’m not conflicted any more.

79. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – A Hymn to the Morning Star [dir. Adam Feinstein]

Apparently this song cause some moral outrage for allegedly promoting Satanism or something like that. But I think it’s sweet. It’s all about love and opening your heart and all that, and it’s got this nice pretty tune. It’s just like those songs about how Jesus loves us, but with a different fictional character instead. It even has Christian-style buildings. It doesn’t matter which fictional characters you choose to welcome into your heart. This is the sort of song that should make everyone happy. At least as long as you’re not the throttled hen.

80. Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight [dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris]

Smashing Pumpkins - Tonight, Tonight
Uploaded by popefucker. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

After that happy-go-lucky song that preceded this, we now take a turn for the sad. "How sad?" you ask. Infinitely sad. In fact, if I had to describe this Smashimg Pumpkins song in one word it would be "Melloncollie". But you come to expect that with Smashing Pumpkins.

I believe it was Homer Simpson who said of Smashing Pumpkins, "You know, my kids think you're the greatest. And thanks to your gloomy music, they've finally stopped dreaming of a future I can't possibly provide." And he hit the nail right on the head, there. Because, nothing crushes our dreams of a future we can't possibly provide than a madcap steampunk space adventure.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy

2010-12-02T19:49:00.007-06:00

Question: What do the first and last tracks of today's installment of "100 Music Videos", Sinéad O'Connor's "The Emperor's New Clothes" and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" have in common? Okay, they came out in the same year, but what else? Answer: Hank Shocklee.

Shocklee was the leader of "The Bomb Squad" an old-school hip-hop production team, known for utilizing a large number of samples, and creating dense, harsh, dissonant beats, influenced by musique concrète, to enhance the lyrics. They produced most of Public Enemies albums, including "Fear of a Black Planet". And Hank Shocklee also produced the incredibly melodic Irish chick rock of "The Emperor's New Clothes". I don't know, I thought that was interesting.

So let's get on with it, shall we?

61. Sinéad O’Connor – The Emperor’s New Clothes [dir. Sophie Muller]

This video gets a lot of hate for Sinéad O'Connor's limited dancing range. It is true that her dancing mostly involves flailing randomly, but the video isn't supposed to be a dancing showcase. The song is about getting over a bad relationship. Or it's about the Catholic Church. I'm not sure which. Now that I think about it, it's probably both. But the point is that now she's not being forced to please anyone. So, even if she's on a stage, in the spotlight, with disco balls and confetti drawing attention to her, she's doing what's right for her. So all the haters are no better than the bad boyfriend and/or Pope. Fight the real enemy!

62. OK Go – This Too Shall Pass [dir. James Frost]

Back in the days of MTV, music videos were mainly about showing off new bands and new releases by old bands. Then MTV became the network that airs “The Hills” and YouTube became the primary purveyor of music videos. But YouTube was never about “check out this band” so much as “check out this giraffe fight”!

That’s where OK Go comes in. While they have yet to make a video about fighting giraffes. But they have “Here it Goes Again” featuring an elaborate dance with treadmills, and “White Knuckles”, featuring elaborate stupid pet tricks. And this video, which has a ginormous Rube Goldberg machine designed to cover the band in paint. And apparently they also write and record songs or something.

For the list, I picked the Rube Goldberg one. Mainly because Rube Goldberg machines are awesome. Also, one of the steps in the Rube Goldberg machine involves a TV that’s playing the treadmill video. So this way, you get two videos in one.

63. Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel

Wow! This has got to be the most depressing burlesque show of all time. Where did all the campy decadence go? They’re outdoors at some two bit county fair and the MC is just standing and singing a ballad about a south-bound train to Raleigh so he can die free, while the girls walk around in their underwear and they have a flashlight instead of a spotlight. The band isn’t even smiling. The only guy who seems to be enjoying himself is the audience member at the 3:16 mark.

64. The Oyster Band – New York Girls

This is the only music video made by any Oysterband incarnation, but it’s a good one. In fact, it’s quite possibly the best music video for a traditional sea chantey of all time. What happened is, they recorded a cover of “New York Girls” for their “Ride” album. The song prominently features the chorus “And away, you santy! My dear Annie. All you New York girls, can you dance the polka?” So when they went to New York on a tour and stumbled across a bunch of polka dancers, they decided “We should make a music video!”

65. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Mary Jane’s Last Dance [dir. Keir McFarlane]

Tom Petty has established himself as a very literary-minded artist whenever he’s ventured into the visual realm. He is of course, best known, as the guy who played Tom Petty in the cinematic adaptation of David Brin’s masterpiece, The Postman. But before that, he made this video, which is apparently some sort of adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. I will admit that I have never read Great Expectations, but I assume it’s about necrophilia.

66. Liz Phair – Polyester Bride

WARNING: This video contains eggs.

This video reminds me of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's 35-minute version of Hamlet. They have a bit where they have the audience do an abstract psychological profile of Ophelia, with actors portraying her id, ego and superego. An audience member representing the ego runs back and forth across the stage, while the id audience members say "Maybe! Maybe not!" over and over again. The the rest of the audience represents competing aspects of her superego, saying "Get thee to a nunnery", "Paint an inch thick" and, most importantly, "Cut the crap, Hamlet! My biological clock is ticking and I want babies now!"

The same sort of thing is going in here. The ego and id are taken care of in the song itself. Liz Phair, is the ego who wants to get away from it all, and stop dating unfamous men. But Henry, her bartending friend, is the id who keeps on questioning whether she's making the right decision. After all, does she really want to be a polyester bride and find alligator cowboy boots she just got on sale? But it's the video itself that completes the picture, representing the superego. and that part's pretty self-explanatory.

67. Pink Floyd – The Trial [dir. Alan Parker]

WARNING: This video contains cartoon nudity/brief regular nudity.

It’s a shame Terry Gilliam never directed any music videos. He's really good with visuals, but often runs into trouble with coming up with a coherent narrative. Plus he had great animation. Well, Pink Floyd's the wall is the closest you'll get to a Gilliam-esque aesthetic in music video form, even if Gilliam himself had nothing to do with it.

68. The Police – Synchronicity II [dir. Godley & Creme]

Hey, everybody! Remember eco-chic? You know, that period in the ’80s and early ’90s when it was actually considered cool to be to care about the environment? Do you know what else was strange about that era? It was considered cool to like Sting! Man, that was weird.

I’d have to say, those modern charity singles can learn a thing from Police-era Sting. Nobody’s going to get moved to action by seeing a bunch of celebrities congratulating themselves in a recording studio. If you want people to care about the environment, you have to dance around on ginormous piles of garbage. You’ve got to show them the problem.

69. Primus – Mr. Krinkle

Since this whole video is shot in a single take, it means all those circus performers had to get everything right or they'd have to shoot the whole video over. If one of them, just one of them, messed up and fell to their deaths or impaled themselves or something, it would ruin the whole video. That's pretty impressive. But most impressive of all is that guy who's on fire. He had to walk across the floor and act like everything was normal. Now I'm sure he had lot's of training lighting himself on fire and acting like everything is normal. But can you imagine walking past a giant, bass-playing pig in a tuxedo and not cracking up? I know, man! Now that takes talent.

70. Public Enemy – Fight the Power [dir. Spike Lee]

It’s hard to believe now, but Flavor Flav was once a respectable human being. Back in the old Public Enemy days, he was a light-hearted voice to bring humor to the righteous anger of the rest of the band. Without the rest of the band, he became, well, the less said about that, the better. So it can be a bit jarring when the big crowd of demonstrators in this video are carrying signs that say “Flavor Flav”.

Less jarring are the dancing Black Panthers. That’s what really makes the video. It all goes to show the importance of proper stewarding at demonstrations. No stewarding, and you get riots. Some stewarding, and you get a well-coordinated demonstration can prevent unnecessary violence and adequately defend against the inevitable police violence. Spike Lee-directed stewarding, and you get dancing Black Panthers. And not even Flavor of Love can take that away.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance

2010-12-01T21:31:00.007-06:00

Today's installment of "100 Music Videos" is brought to you by the letter "M". All of our featured artists start with "M". But "M" stands for things other than "M.I.A." and "MGMT". It also stands for Man, Music, Mozart. And you will find plenty of examples of music on this list. And there will be two groups of men as well, but no Mozart.

More importantly, "M" is for Morris dancing. And Metropolis. These are things we will definitely see more of in this list. There will also be cows. While cow doesn't begin with "M" in English, it does in Italian, so it still applies to the situation at hand.

So let's get on with it.

51. M.I.A. – Sunshowers [dir. Rajesh Touchriver]

WARNING: This video offended somebody somewhere for some reason.

This video was banned from MTV, which is strange for several reasons. First of all, given how often MTV plays music videos nowadays, you might as well ban it from the Golf Channel. Also, compared to some of her later videos, a bunch of fully-clothed chicks frolicking about the jungle while not being brutally murdered is pretty tame. I suppose somebody really didn't like the idea of cow in the jungle.

52. Kirsty MacColl – Don’t Come the Cowboy With Me, Sonny Jim! [dir. Sarah Tuft]

You know, the world really needs more British cowgirls. She's just so sweet here it's easy to forget she was the foul-mouthed New Yorker in the Pogues "Fairytale of New York".

53. Manu Chao – Me Gustas Tú

It's the frame that does it. If it was just the video of the people dancing goofily it would be all in good fun. But with the frame with all the random animated scribbles and magazine cut-outs popping in and out, it transforms from all in good fun to all in great fun. It's like graffiti that moves. Normally something like that would detract from the video, by drawing attention away from the main show, but since the video is people dancing around and having a good time, it complements it perfectly.

54. Loreena McKennitt – The Mummers’ Dance

I don’t really like the “new age” label being attached to music. “New Age” is a fairly well-defined philosophy, centered on nonsensical spiritual fulfillment and hostility to science. So it’s understandable that people who ascribe to that philosophy would be attracted to old English and Celtic pagan imagery. But, the thing is, old English and Celtic pagan imagery is fun! And you know, there really isn’t enough old English and Celtic pagan imagery in music videos.

So here, we get a lot of “new age” aesthetics going on, but it’s all the goofy rituals associated with “new age” stuff, without all chi and enneagrams and all that. But because it gets the “new age” tag, it turns a lot of people off. If you want real new age music, back up to the Insane Clown Posse video.

55. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Colours

Folk and punk: two genres that aren’t usually associated with music videos. Something about the DIY aesthetic goes against the idea of filming things with production values. But the English folk-punks in The Men They Couldn’t Hang decided to be the exception to that rule.

They managed to keep the DIY look by making a video collage to make simultaneously cheap and true to the nautical theme. The result looks both like a slap-dash punk album cover, a slice of English folk revival and an epic ’80s music video. Dressing up in Napoleonic-era sailor suits and engaging in Busby Berkeley-esque semaphore routines has never seemed so punk.

56. Men Without Hats – The Safety Dance [dir. Tim Pope]

Speaking of English folk revival, here’s some Canadian synth-pop.

So now you know: "The Safety Dance" is a Morris dance. Although, you might have been able to figure that out without the video by that line about being free to act like an imbecile. The question is: which dance is it? Upon closer investigation, it is the Three Musketeers, done in the tradition of Bledington as performed by Chippenham Town Morris. This is perfectly acceptable, because nobody can agree what tune goes with that dance anyway: I’ve seen it done with “La Marseilles”, “The British Grenadiers” and “Ode to Joy”. So why not “The Safety Dance”?

There is also some sort of processional they do going into the town square. I’m not sure what dance that is, but it’s not Winster, and that's the main processional I'm familiar with. Any input would be appreciated.

57. MGMT – Kids [dir. Ray Tintori]

WARNING: This video contains brief cartoon nudity.

Judging by the YouTube comments on this, there seem to be two things that go through peoples minds when they see this video: 1) That poor kid is going to be scarred for life! and 2) Man, that chick who plays the mom is hot. To this I say: 1) That kid is acting! He’s pretending to be traumatized! He knows that the monsters aren’t real, because he can see the people operating them! and 2) That chick who plays the mom Joanna Newsom; of course she’s hot!

58. Janelle Monáe – Many Moons [dir. Alan Ferguson]

Now this, my friends, is not a music video. It's the music video. All other music videos hang their heads down in shame at the sight of this music video.

For those unfamiliar, this song is part of an epic suite that's supposed to be some sort of R&B re-imagining of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. But not knowing that doesn't make it any less awesome. What matters is that Janelle Monáe dances like a robot. And I mean that in the best possible terms. I mean a robot programmed to dance in a future in which robo-dancing technology has moved well beyond the uncanny valley and gotten to the point where it surpasses any form of dancing us mere humans could accomplish. She is to dancing like a robot what Deep Blue is to playing chess like a robot. And, as far as I can tell, that's what's happening in the story.

Just to articulate the lengths to which this video goes, watch her eyes. Now normally, when people write dances, they don't include blinking in the choreography. Normally. And in addition to that, you get all the sci-fi special effects displays and the grand storytelling.

59. Mr. Lif – Live From the Plantation [dir. Ian Levasseur]

You know, Mr. Lif looks really funny in a suit and tie, working in a cubicle. Especially given the song title. But it all makes sense in the end, since it’s going after a general sense of working class alienation, whatever that work happens to be. Roots and Office Space are closer than they seem.

This whole connection between old-fashioned slavery and modern-day wage-slavery gives me an idea. Somebody should totally make a whacky office comedy about an actual slave plantation. You can have a slave-owner who’s deluded into thinking he’s friends with the slaves, but they still think of him as the guy who whips them when they don’t produce enough cotton. So whenever he tries to be friendly it gets aaawkwaaard.

And when the slaves get pissed off and smash the cotton gin, they can do something like the “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster” scene in Office Space. But rather than having white guys ironically listening to gangsta rap, it would be black guys ironically listening to white-guy music. Music like, uh, like . . .

60. My Chemical Romance – Welcome to the Black Parade [dir. Sam Bayer]

My Chemical Romance – “Welcome to the Black Parade” | Music Videos | SPIKE.com

Apparently this song, video, and the album it comes from, is all a metaphor for cancer. I prefer to take it literally. I mean, what’s more fun? A guy with raccoon makeup who was asked by a television to lead a parade of goth chicks in gasmasks through a post-apocalyptic wasteland where it’s raining ash to he can be a champion of the downtrodden? Or Cancer? I thought so.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund

2010-11-30T21:56:00.009-06:00

For today's installment of "100 Music Videos" I'd like to introduce a game I call "Irony or New Sincerity?" I don't think Alanis Morisette reads this blog, so I will assume you all know what irony is. New Sincerity, on the other hand is a bit more complicated. The idea is that, when something doesn't have indie credibility, but someone likes it anyway, they will pretend they only like it ironically. Then they keep their true feelings bottled up for a really long time, before admitting that they like it unironically. And then they go on obnoxious pseudo-philosophical rant about how admitting this represents some sort of paradigm shift in the way we as a culture perceive art until somebody makes them shut up. And that's new sincerity.

But sometimes there are things that just demand good, old-fashioned irony, so it can be tricky to figure out which one applies to which situation. I'll give you a head start here. The first video on the list: definitely, unequivocally irony. The last video on the list: so inherently awesome that there's no need for either. The rest, you'll have to figure out for yourself.

Let the games begin!

41. Insane Clown Posse – Miracles [dir. Paul Andresen]

Over the course of Insane Clown Posse’s long, illustrious career, Insane Clown Posse developed a reputation for being a) a bunch of violence-obsessed nihilists, and b) really dumb. Aware of this stigma, they recorded “Miracles” in which they boldly set out to disprove the first assumption. Instead, they proved the second. Personally, I blame the fucking magnets.

42. Iron Maiden – Can I Play With Madness [dir. Julian Doyle]

I like the way this captures the angst all schoolchildren feel. There’s something universal about the stuffy art teacher wanting the kid to draw the church but he keeps on putting in evil clouds, even though the evil clouds are really there but wait until the stuffy art teacher turns his back and, really we’d all rather be headbanging to heavy metal anyway so why do we have to draw that stupid church?

It’s fitting that this is the 42nd entry on the list because the stuffy art teacher is played by Graham Chapman of Monty Python in his last performance, and Chapman had previously worked on a failed Ringo Starr-led TV show co-written by Douglas Adams, who later adapted abandoned storylines from the show into The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which made the number 42 famous.

But, wait a minute! Douglas Adams also wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency which featured a secret alien message in the poem “Kublai Khan”, which was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who also wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, which was later adapted into a song by Iron Maiden OHMIGOD!!! All the conspiracy theories are true!!!!!

43. Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal [dir. Colin Chilvers]

Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal
Uploaded by cavapanon. - See the latest featured music videos.

For the Michael Jackson entry, I've decided to follow the Nostalgia Critic, and go with "Smooth Criminal" over "Thriller". It’s a close call, but the neatly choreographed gangster barfight just works so well. Also, to avoid beating a dead horse, I will follow the Nostalgia Critic’s advice and not crack any jokes about the Michael Jackson pedophilia stuff. So, uh . . .

. . .

. . .

Oh yeah! Some people don’t like that bit in the middle of the video where the song stops and weird ambient music plays while everybody goes into orgasm. Those people don’t understand sonata form. You see, at the beginning you play the theme, while the middle section is more improvisatorial and focused on building up tension until the return of the theme at the end. He’s just following in the footsteps of Mozart and Beethoven.

44. Lady Gaga – Bad Romance [dir. Francis Lawrence]

Lady Gaga has come under a lot of criticism for parading around in a bunch of weird costumes to cover up the weakness of her music. Fair enough, but the parades around in a lot of costumes! I mean, she goes through twelve costumes in this video alone, all of them completely non-functional! That’s a lot! And one of them includes eyeglasses made out of razorblades! Razorblades! Eyeglasses! Now that’s freaky!

45. Laid Back – Bakerman [dir. Lars Von Trier]

Lars Von Trier’s Dogme 95 movement involved creating a set of filmmaking rules in order to preserve realism and reduce expensive special effects and gimmicks. For instance, all filming had to be done on location. You can’t use music unless the characters the characters are playing or listening to music. And any action scenes had to be done by the actors themselves, so you couldn’t use stunt men or special effects.

So when Lars Von Trier directs a music video in which the members of the band are flying, he had no choice but to get them to jump from an airplane with their instruments and perform the song while they fell. By doing this he was able to preserve realism and reduce expensive special effects and gimmicks.

46. Seth Lakeman – The White Hare

Seth Lakeman - The White Hare
Uploaded by EMI_Music. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Omigod! Isn’t Seth Lakeman just sooooo dreamy?!?! Okay, so it was about time that the English folk scene got its own heartthrob. What makes him different from other heartthrob singers is that he actually writes his own traditional English folk songs. And the old-beat-up-movie look of the video with it’s painted backdrops and wind machines gives it just the right level of cheesiness that you’re not sure if you’re enjoying it ironically or with new sincerity.

47. Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun [dir. Edd Griles]

It’s common for kids to set up imaginary battles between the stars of their favorite TV shows and argue over who would win. You know, like “If Superman and Batman got into a fight, who would win?” (Answer: the invincible guy who can fly and deflect bullets and has heat vision and x-ray vision). I, for one always wondered, if Mario from the Super Mario Brothers Super Show fought the chick who sang the theme song to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse got into a wrestling match, who would win?

I had always assumed, it would be Mario, since he’s played by professional wrestler Captain Lou Albano, but this concrete video evidence suggests otherwise. I’ve heard rumors that wrestling matches are sometimes fake, but I’m still willing to take this at face value. So Mario, you’re still number one, bud Cyndi Lauper’s gonna pin you against the wall if you get between her and fun.

48. Leningrad – Gelendzhik [dir. Andrey Zakirzyanov]

WARNING: This video contains meat.

In the late ’90s America was faced with the short-lived swing revival. Remember that? Because Europe is always behind the times except for when they’re ahead of the times, it took until the early ’00s for all that to catch on in Russia. But, at least with Leningrad, they managed to do a better job than the Americans.

The American ska and swing scenes were a bit too focused on trying to replicate the original scenes exactly, without modernizing it in any way, so it came off as a pale imitation of the original. Leningrad definitely preserves the sounds of old-school Russian swing. The guitar solo resembles a similar solo in Shostakovich’s first Jazz suite. But, rather than copying the zoot suits and all that, Leningrad went in a different, more poultry-centric direction. And the world is better for it.

49. Louise Attaque – J’t’emmène au vent [dir. Mark Plati]

The name “Louise Attaque” was an homage to the Violent Femmes. You see, “Louise” is a woman’s name, and “Attaque” is something violent people do. Since all the members of the band were not-particularly-aggressive men, they came up with that cartoon alter-ego you see in the video. Here, you see the band playing folk music in the barren plains of rural France, but the mere presence of the cartoon alter-ego is enough to cause swarms of people to dash out at them from nowhere. I think.

50. Corb Lund – Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer [dir. Joel Stewart]

I’m sure plenty of people have listened to this song and thought to themselves “You say you have hair in your eyes like a highland steer but seeing as I am not, nor have I ever been, a highland steer, I have no frame of reference to grasp this concept.” Well, fear not, dear listener, because Corb Lund has provided a video that introduces the latest cinematographic technique: a little thing called Bovine-Cam™.

With the miracle of Bovine-Cam™ you can experience what it’s like to have hair in your eyes like a highland steer. Simply find a highland steer, and add Bovine-Cam™, and let it loose in whatever institution you frequent. For instance if you’re a hunter, let it loose in a hunting lodge. If you’re a god-fearing Canadian, let it loose in a church. Just to be safe, let it loose in a Hunting lodge where some guy is pretending to give a sermon. Get yours now!

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village

2010-11-29T19:25:00.011-06:00

In our previous installment of "100 Music Videos", I mentioned that, despite being in alphabetical order, you may find some unexpected thematic unity in the entries. This time, nothing. Two of the videos have mice. Two of them are about going to space. But beyond that, today is schizo day.

There are some things that this installment will focus on a bit more than other installments. If you are looking for videos about math, or Australian politics or epic battles between orcs and Nazis, you will find a higher concentration of those topics in this installment than any other one. By which I mean more than nothing.

. . . but I've been talking too much.

31. Freezepop – Less Talk More Rokk

I’ve encountered a lot of people hating on this video because they first heard the song through Guitar Hero™, and then they were shocked to find out that the song uses keytars. Come on, people, what do you think a Guitar Hero™ controller is, something that isn't a keytar? Now let’s stop bitching about the instruments, and focus on the important things. You know, like the giant mice crawling around a disco floor.

32. Garmarna – Vänner Och Fränder [dir. Kristofer Lönnå]

In this list, I’ve generally tried to avoid videos that consisted simply of the band performing, without any bells or whistles or giant mice. In this case, I’ll have to make an exception. For those unfamiliar with Garmarna, they are an industrial-folk group that has been referred to as both “the Swedish Steeleye Span” and “the Swedish Rammstein”. As such, lead singer Emma Härdelin is basically an evil version of Maddy Prior.

Just look at her. She’s completely still. Her face a blank stare of pure, concentrated evil. It’s like she’s possessed. No. It’s like she’s possessing the rest of the band and making them to her evil bidding. Even at the end of the video when she finally smiles it’s the most maniacal smile known to man, accompanied by the most maniacal light chuckle known to man.

33. Crispin Glover – Ben [dir. Crispin Glover]

Best. Michael Jackson cover. Ever. Oddly enough, the original was also about a rat. But this version has a certain something that the original version lacks. Specifically, it has a bunch of formally dressed women going into orgasm induced by a mischief of mice.

34. Glukoza – Shvayne [dir. A. Yevdokimov]

Glukoza is in many ways similar to the better-known Russian duo t.A.T.u. But while t.A.T.u. are straight people who pretend to be lesbians, Glukoza is a farmgirl from the Urals who pretends to be a computer-generated KGB agent or something. She also has a posse of assorted computer-generated misfits and, in this video, they team up on a mission to kill as many Nazis as possible. There’s also an army of orcs, but they’re with the good guys.

The plot of this video was later shamelessly ripped off by Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. However, what with the orcish army and all, it’s pretty clear that the “Shvayne” video is itself a rip-off of Lord of the Rings. But that was a rip-off of William Morris’s fantasy novels like The Wood Beyond the World and The Story of the Glittering Plain. But those novels were essentially fantasy rewrites of his utopian novel News From Nowhere, which was a reply to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. So, by transitivity . . .

35. Great Big Sea – Mari-Mac

Years before Team America, Team Canada was at the vanguard making kid-unfriendly videos with marionettes. They're videos may not have gone to the same extremes, but they had their charms. What they lacked in social commentary they made up for in lack of horrible social commentary. What they lacked in extended vomiting sequences, they made up for in Irish scat-singing.

But this video also gets as some very deep issues. You see, our humble narrator is not a puppet, but he still lives within the puppet’s world. In both storytelling role, and in physical size, he assumes the role of God. Sometimes this God/narrator is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the house and sometimes it’s just his head sticking out of the floor. It makes you wonder if we’re being controlled by the giant head of a hyperactive Newfoundlander who sees us as mere puppets in his music video. It really makes you think.

36. Hard ’n Phirm – Pi [dir. Keith Schofield]

Once, in a topology class, the professor was getting to the subject of the pullback of a vector bundle. To motivate the subject, he brought up the following hypothetical situation: “You’re walking down a dark alleyway and some guy puts a gun up to your head and says ‘What’s the universal property for the pullback of a vector bundle?’ What do you say?” The introduction to this video reminds me of that hypothetical situation for some reason.

37. PJ Harvey – The Piano [dir. Maria Mochnacz]

WARNING: This video contains censored nudity.

What makes this video particularly interesting is that it forces us to confront some difficult questions about the nature of censorship. We all like to think of ourselves as freedom-loving people who support all forms of free expression. This should make us completely opposed to the censorship of the pictures in the video. But . . . if those pictures weren’t censored then we wouldn’t be able to read the lyrics, so a lack of censorship would, in and of itself, be a form of censorship.

38. Helium – Leon’s Space Song

Helium is one of those bands that acted as a bridge from the gritty, grungy ’90s alternative chick-rock of Belly and Liz Phair to the twee, Renaissance Faire-inspired ’00s indie chick-folk of Joanna Newsom and Trembling Bells. In fact as far as I know it’s the only bridge. To see this transition in action, wait for the 1:47 mark in this video where scruffy Boston auto mechanic Mary Timony hands back the keys to her newly-repaired car, complete with giant unicorn key-chain. That is the exact moment when alternative (whatever that means) turned into indie (whatever that means).

39. The Herd – 2020 [dir. Mike Daly]

You want to make a great party video? Then make the video kinetic and exciting, with the band members dancing. You want to make a video that conveys your skepticism of newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s claims to bring hope and change? Then you want to fill the video with a bunch of newspaper articles. You want to do both? Well then . . .

That’s where modern technology comes in. While a lot of CGI these days is focused on making fake creatures look like everyday life. But they can also be sued to make actual people look like animated newsprint. By putting the band in the newspapers, you get an awesome kinetic video of people grabbing onto letters, but you also get to be reminded of all those moments in American and Australian history most people would rather forget. You also get to learn that Australian crossword puzzles have a lot of black squares. It all fits together to make a pretty much perfect video.

If that doesn’t convince you of the videos awesomeness, I have two words for you: hip-hop accordion.

40. The Imagined Village – Space Girl [dir. Henry Dalton]

The Imagined Village is a group of English folk musicians, working with various Asian and dubstep musicians to make the genre all multi-culti and drag it, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Okay, not kicking and screaming, since it’s old guard people like Martin and Eliza Carthy who were doing the dragging. But dragging it into the 21st century nonetheless. With Eliza Carthy’s “Space Girl”, they overshot a bit. This video is going to be soooo dated in a thousand years.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll

2010-11-28T19:13:00.010-06:00

Since I'm arranging these videos in alphabetical order, there isn't any explicit theme for each installment of "100 Music Videos". But sometimes, patterns emerge. On the basis of this installment, I have come do an astonishing conclusion: every single band starting with "D" or "F" is jovial and light hearted, while every single band starting with "E" is dour and serious.

For the most part, this will be a light-hearted installment. We will get to explore the lighter side of war, the lighter side of domestic violence and, most importantly, the lighter side of being hacked to pieces by surgical implements in a demonic hell-bar. Even the lone "C" band in this entry is taking a fairly humorous dissection of inequality in America. All in all it's a laugh riot. At least it would be if it weren't for those few "E" bands coming in and spoiling the mood.

So kick back, break out the nitrous oxide and enjoy (most of) the show!

21. The Coup – Fat Cats and Bigga Fish [dir. Andrei Rozen]

A lot of mainstream hip-hop is centered around rags to riches stories. Jay-Z was one from the streets but managed to become a millionaire by rapping. And if you are good at rapping and incredibly lucky you can be a millionaire too. And you can use your millions of dollars to promote the destruction of working class neighborhoods to build a basketball stadium.

But Boots Riley, Marxist that he is, is having none of that. You get the same sort of epic storytelling as he goes from the streets to the fancy world of bribing politicians and tearing down poor neighborhoods to build condos. But when he gets to the top he doesn’t like what he sees. If you’re going to be a criminal, better to steal bus passes then to drive people out of their homes.

22. The Decemberists – 16 Military Wives [dir. Aaron Stewart]

The Decemberists are often criticized for peddling escapism. While other indie bands write relatable songs about relatable things like Jack White falling in love with a girl who doesn’t know what love is, Colin Meloy is off writing songs about mortal enemies duking it out in a whale's stomach.

Wes Anderson is also often cricitized for peddling escapism. While other directors are making relatable movies about finding love with manic pixie dream girls while listening to indie rock, he’s making unrelatable movies about planning whacky heists while listening to indie rock.

So how come when the Decemberists make a music video in the style of Wes Anderson, it ends up being a timely attack on the very Bush administration that everyone was trying to escape from in the first place?

23. Devo – Whip It [dir. Gerald Casale]

Devo - Whip It
Uploaded by Dan_of_the_Land. - Explore more music videos.

Every facet of Devo’s art extends from their “devolution theory” and the traumatic events that lead up to it, so to truly appreciate this video, you have to have some understanding of what Devo stands for and what they went through. You see, they were students at Kent State university, during the infamous shooting, and were, in fact participants in the protests. Gerald Casale was even standing next to Allison Krause when she was shot by the National Guard troops.

This experienced, followed by Richard Nixon’s infamous post-massacre denunciation of the protestors as “bums” led the people who later formed Devo to conclude that mankind had reached is peak in evolution and had now gone into a state of devolution. Naturally, the only way to express these ideas was to put flower pots on their heads and remove women’s clothes with a whip.

24. Dixie Chicks – Goodbye, Earl [dir. Evan Bernard]

It’s funny the tricks time plays on us all. Once upon a time Jane Krakowski was known as “that chick from Ally McBeal who isn’t Calista Flockhart” and not “that chick from 30 Rock who isn’t Tina Fey”. Also the Dixie Chicks were not the country music pariahs they are now. Rather they were the band that wrote that cheery, light-hearted, happy-go-lucky song about domestic violence. But what a song it is.

25. The Dresden Dolls – Coin-Operated Boy [dir. Michael Pope]

The Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy
Uploaded by Michel_Pougnou. - Arts and animation videos.

For those unfamiliar, Amanda Palmer’s career started as a living statue in Harvard Square. This gave her an expertise in miming, which I assume she passed on to drummer Brian Viglione. This is the result. So parents: when you ask your kid what they want to be grow up and they say “I want to pretend to be a statue for money”, don’t worry; they’ll turn out all right.

26. Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues [dir. D. A. Pennebaker]

Joan Baez once described Bob Dylan as “good with words and keeping things vague”. So it’s understandable that his most famous foray into the world of music video would be awash in dense verbal symbolism. But, as vague as it is, if you look closely enough, you can figure out what everything’s about. For instance, that sign that says “government” represents the government. The sign that days “pawking metaws” represents bad spelling. The sign that says “write Braille” represents irony. I'm not sure what the sign that says "bed, but" represents.

27. El-P – Stepfather Factory [dir. Plates Animation]

The main conceit of this song, a corporate executive rapping his buzzwords and buzzphrases, sounds like the sort of thing an actual corporate executive might be inclined to do to show how “hip” and “approachable” they are. However, El-P’s fusion of this with a dystopian sci-fi hellscape make the whole ordeal a lot less painful and terrifying than an actual rapping CEO would be. We are forever in your debt, El-P.

28. Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These) [dir. Dave Stewart & Joe Roseman]

What is it with bands that start with “E” and music videos featuring dark sci-fi presentations in corporate boardrooms? I guess that will just have to remain one of the great mysteries of life. But there are three important things that set this apart from your ordinary everyday, run-of-the-mill dark sci-fi corporate boardroom presentation video. One: Annie Lennox making dominatrix poses in a suit. Two: David Stewart cello-syncing the synthesizer solo. Three: cows.

29. The Fiery Furnaces – Even in the Rain [dir. Scott Jacobson]

Somewhere in the history of the music video, people realized that the content of the video didn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the song itself. Once people realized that, it was only a matter of time before somebody said: “Hey, let’s make our music video be a documentary on the making of the 1969 motorcycle movie, Easy Rider!” Why it took until 2009 before somebody followed through is beyond me.

So, even though this video has nothing to do with what there singing about, it’s still a noteworthy video and has plenty of useful information about the making of Easy Rider. For instance did you know that Dennis Hopper showed signs of extreme paranoia that resulted in trouble with the producers? And did you know that Peter Fonda looks really hot as a chick? And did you know that Rip Torn looks exactly like that British guy from The Daily Show? I didn’t know that either, until I saw this video.

30. Finntroll – Under Bergets Rot [dir. Animaatiokopla]

Finnish black metal/polka band Finntroll is a lot more inviting than other black metal bands. They’re not about hacking each other to pieces with surgical implements to shock people. They’re about hacking each other to pieces with surgical implements because it’s fun. And even the squares are welcome, as long as they like getting hacked to pieces with surgical implements. And it’s nice to know that, even in demonic hell-bars of the damned, you’ll get slapped if you grab a chick’s ass. Plus those dancing back-up mummies are just sooooo damn cute.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn

2010-11-27T19:46:00.012-06:00

I like to think of our first installment in "100 Music Videos" as something of a journey. A journey from Norway all the way over to Iceland. This installment will be an altogether stranger journey, as it begins in a country that no longer exists and ends in a country that most Americans don't believe exists.

We also venture into a wider range of genres, ranging from country to German hip-hop to some crazy made-up bullshit genre called "pronk". We get so see supermodel Kate Moss get murdered, a topless Japanese chick covering herself with sugar and Kate Bush getting gritty. People disappointed in the lack of Jonathan Coulton videos will get a nod. There's something for everyone. In fact, there's even something for unbirthing fetishists (furry fetishists are advised to check out our previous installment).

On with the show!

11. Bijelo Dugme – Lipe Cvatu

Bijelo Dugme - Lipe cvatu
Uploaded by Mr_Kelevra. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

In the 1980s a lot of grandiose, bombastic 70s bands realized that the world of music was changing and rapidly changed in kind. They stripped down, tossed in some synths, made tighter arrangements, and released albums like t h e s e. This process was not limited to the west, as can be seen from the experience of Yugoslavian cock-rock band Bijelo Dugme, which suddenly became a synth-folk-pop band in 1984.

You can see all this in the incredibly sparse video for "Lipe Cvatu", where the band is pretty much chilling in a restaurant that feels more like a cafeteria, listening to thet nice Kosovar folk group. Bosnian heartthrob Mladen “Tifa” Vojičić is just laying back content in his awesomeness and Serbo-Croatian heartthrob Goran Bregović is drunkenly waving his fedora around. Oddly enough, the drunken Bregović would later become the most respected musician in the Balkans and the sober Tifa would get kicked out of the band for drug abuse.

12. Björk – Where is the Line? [dir. Gabríela Friðriksdóttir]

Bjork - Where Is The Line
Uploaded by Narfouette. - Up-to-the minute news videos.

This is a pretty weird video. It has exploding hay in it. What’s weird about the video is that the exploding hay is probably the least weird thing about it. The second least weird thing about it would be when the hay that doesn’t explode gets up and starts dancing. The second weirdest part would be when Björk gives birth to a strange gooey white alien-creature that coughs up gelatin. And the weirdest part would be when that last part is played in reverse. But, you know what? That's why we love her.

13. Laura Branigan – Self Control [dir. William Friedkin]

And there’s a creepy doll / That always follows you / It’s got a ruined eye . . .

Anyway, there are plenty of music videos where a bunch of crazy shit happens (see previous video). Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” video is sort of one of these crazy surreal music videos, but it’s so much more. This tells the story of an ordinary person trapped in a crazy surreal music video. Branigan’s facial expressions convey the confusion that the viewer feels. Who’s that guy in the white mask and trench coat? She doesn’t know either. Aren’t those leotard-wearing dancers disturbing? She’s disturbed too. Those hands coming out of the walls giving you nightmares? They’re giving her nightmares too. Did you notice that when the guy in the white mask takes his coat off, he’s kind of hot? She definitely noticed.

14. Holger Burner – Unser Standard

With the German government once again imposing austerity measures on its citizens it’s putting a bit of a damper on the whole post-Cold War triumphalism. Thankfully, Holger Burner is here to connect the dots by presenting two intertwining stories to tie class struggle present to class struggle past.

Now, history never repeats itself exactly, but the same basic elements are still at play. The clothes, cars and film stock may have changed, but the working class is still the working class and the ruling class is still the ruling class. And, more importantly, in Hamburg, people still burst out rapping at the pub. Some things are universal.

15. Kate Bush – Army Dreamers

Do you know what’s hot? Chicks with guns! Especially chicks with big guns. Especially when the chick in question is Kate Bush. Especially when she has such thick makeup it makes her look like a porcelain doll. Especially when on top of all that makeup there’s a layer of dirt intended to convey the harsh reality of war. Especially when she’s surrounded by a bunch of guys with similarly big guns performing dainty balletic dance moves. Especially when they’re all singing this particular song. Especially when it’s all accompanied by a harpsichord. Did I mention it’s Kate Bush?

16. Cardiacs – Tarred and Feathered

This is pronk.

17. Johnny Cash – Delia’s Gone [dir. Anton Corbijn]

JOHNNY CASH: Delia, oh Delia! Delia all my life . . .
BUTTHEAD: Uh, who is this dude? He looks familiar.
BEAVIS: Oh yeah, yeah, that’s, um, um, uh, whatshisname, um, um, uh, uh, Captain Kangaroo. Heh heh.
BUTTHEAD: Captain what?
BEAVIS: You know? Captain Kangaroo! Heh heh. You know, Mr. Greenjeans and magic drawing board? Yeah, heh heh, yeah, you know?
JOHNNY CASH: . . . and I met Delia there. Found her in her parlor . . .
BEAVIS: Um, heh, what kind of music is this?
BUTTHEAD: Uh, I think this is, like, some kind of gangsta rap.
BEAVIS: Huh huh. Oh yeah. Heh heh.
BUTTHEAD: I bet this dude scores a lot because, like, he wears black.
BEAVIS: Yeah, yeah. Heh heh. Plus he’s old.
BOTH: Heh heh huh huh heh.
JOHNNY CASH: . . . make me want to grab my sub-mo-chine . . .
BEAVIS: Whoah! Heh. This is pretty violent!
BUTTHEAD: Yeah! Huh huh. Enough is enough.
BEAVIS: Heh heh. Yeah.
BOTH: Huh huh heh heh heh.
JOHNNY CASH: . . . the first time I shot her . . .
BUTTHEAD: Whoah!
JOHNNY CASH: . . . I shot her in the side . . .
BUTTHEAD: He shouldn’t have shot that chick. She’s pretty hot.
BEAVIS: Huh huh huh. Yeah, really. Heh heh.
BUTTHEAD: I would have taken her off his hands. Uh, huh huh.
BEAVIS: Yeah, you know what he should have done? He should have, like, fired some warning shots up in the air. Heh heh. That would have scared her away. And then, like, and then I could score. Heh, yeah, heh heh.
BUTTHEAD: I guess if a chick has to choose between, like, dying or, like, doing it with you, you might actually have a chance at scoring, Beavis. Huh huh huh.
BEAVIS: Heh heh heh. Yeah, yeah yeah. Yeah, I know. Heh heh. I know. Heh. Uh, that’s why I was suggesting it, you know, yeah. Heh heh. Heh heh.
BUTTHEAD: Huh huh.
JOHNNY CASH: . . . Delia’s gone.

18. Cibo Matto – Sugar Water [dir. Michel Gondry]

Cibo Matto- Sugar Water [PV]
Uploaded by skanel. - See the latest featured music videos.

Oh, Michel Gondry, you think you’re so clever. Well two can play at that game. How about . . .

Go hang a salami.
I’m a lasagna hog.

You may now concede defeat.

19. Cloud Cult – Running With the Wolves [dir. Eric Power]

When you make a music video that consists of literal re-enactments of the lyrics, it can be dangerous. Especially when the lyrics involve things like “Left all our clothes with the car back by the road”, “Left all we own in a hole in our back yard” and “Left all our cubicles in little flaming piles”. But the fine folks in Cloud Cult figured out how to do it right. The secret? Construction paper. Also helpful? The creative manner in which they disconnected their phones.

20. Bruce Cockburn – Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Bruce Cockburn is one of those singers who gets angry whenever he reads the newspaper and writes a song about it. For instance, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher” is him getting angry about the contras in Nicaragua. What makes “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” so special is that it’s a catch-all song for every time he gets angry reading the newspaper.

Rather than depicting ordinary people in a specific third-world country struggling to survive a specific conflict, we get a bunch of interpretive dancers in weird make-up and skin-tight body suits struggling to survive in an ’80s dreamscape filled with fake rocks, barbed wire and fog machines. This makes it the ur-music-video-about-how-terrible-the-state-of-the-world-is-today.

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

100 Music Videos, Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn

2010-11-26T19:10:00.015-06:00

I now present the first installment of a ten-part series entitled "100 music videos". Like my "Check Out This Thang I Found On Teh Internetz" feature, it exists mainly as an excuse to add blog entries while other people do the work. As the title suggests, it will present one hundred music videos, ten in each installment, covering a range of eras and genres but, each in their own way, somehow pretty cool (don't worry, the ICP entry in the fifth installment is there ironically).

Some ground rules. No fan-made videos (sorry Jonathan Coulton). And there has to be a video online that can be embedded. It has to be reasonably good quality. So I'm not including videos that had the sound removed for copyright reasons (sorry, Prince) or if the only video is an incomplete copy from a VHS tape (sorry, Miranda Sex Garden). Some of the videos may be NSFW. In those cases, I will put a warning before the video that explains what potentially objectionable content may be found therein.

Let the videos commence!

1. A-Ha – Take On Me [dir. Steve Barron]

There’s not really all that much to say about this video that hasn’t been said hundreds of times before. It’s probably one of the best known videos of the MTV era and, thanks to the “literal video version”, one of the best known videos of the YouTube era. But to get to the coveted #1 position on this list, it all comes down to one defining quality: the band’s name starting with an ‘A’ and then a punctuation mark.

2. Adam and the Ants – Stand and Deliver [dir. Mike Mansfield]

For a guy whose style is referred to as “New Romantic”, Adam Ant seems pretty obsessed with the aesthetics of the 18th century, i.e. the age of reason. I mean, come on! Those tricorne hats went out of style before the French Revolution. Okay maybe if he’s harkening to the Sturm und Drang of the 1770s and 1780s, I guess that could be considered romantic. But then he’s talking about being a “dandy highwayman”, but the dandy school of fashion didn’t start until the regency. And why is he calling himself a “dandy” when he’s clearly dressed like a fop? Come on, Adam. I think most people expect a little more accuracy in their music video costumes. Oh well, at least the song’s good.

3. Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass [dir. Jason Herring & Jeremy Fish]

This gritty sci-fi re-imagining of The Warriors posits New York a city torn between rival gangs like the Baseball Furries (who wear Yankees uniforms over their fursuits) and the Guys With Pigs on Their Heads (who wear pigs on their heads). And the lone Jewish rapper Aesop Rock has to traverse a city filled with enemies and try to bring people together. It’s all pretty ludicrous, but not as ludicrous as the original version of The Warriors. I mean that movie had a gang called the Baseball Furies who wore Yankees uniforms over goth clown make-up! Now that’s just crazy!

It may be too much for some people to take. But don’t worry. Aesop is perfectly willing to acknowledge that he’s not for everyone, which is why he gives you the chance to unwatch it at the end!

4. Tori Amos – Cornflake Girl (UK Version) [dir. Big TV!]

There are actually two videos for this song, because the Americans thought the original (this one) was too weird. Crazy Americans! It’s not that weird, kiddos. It’s an homage to The Wizard of Oz. And there’s a piano because Tori Amos is a pianist and she’s taking on the role of Dorothy. And those two Eskimos tied together are obviously some sort of commentary on the movie Heathers. And the two scantily-clad chicks having a catfight are there because, well it wouldn’t be a music video without that. I mean, other than that, the only difference between the video and The Wizard of Oz is that Dorothy doesn't normally get caught in a giant spider web on the way to Oz. Okay? See, it’s not that complicated, America!

5. Fiona Apple – Not About Love [dir. Michael Blieden]

I know Fiona Apple took a lot of heat for her video for “Criminal”. Something about the incredibly hyper-sexualized video didn’t jibe with her earnest girl power messages. But I would argue that this video helps put everything into its proper context. By separating the visual content from the lyrical content and putting herself to the side it allows the listener to view the song as its own being.

6. The B-52’s – Roam [dir. Adam Bernstein]

Although this music video came out in 1989, it’s actually pretty relevant to the current economic crisis. You’d think a song with lyrics like “Roam if you want to. Roam around the world.” would have a bit of a “Let them eat cake!” quality since most of us can’t afford to go gallivanting about the globe, no matter how much they want. But with the video they provide the secret for aspiring world travelers on a budget: blue screens!

7. Barenaked Ladies – One Week [dir. McG]

Barenaked Ladies - One Week
Uploaded by WBRNewMedia. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

This is what’s known in the movie biz as a “gearshift video”. It starts out as one thing but then ¡BAM! it’s something else. For example, Psycho spends its first 40 minutes as the story of a woman on the run for stealing her boss’s money, then suddenly changes into a slasher movie. In this case the video starts out as the usual mish-mash of Alice in Wonderland-inspired imagery, albeit with a bunch of chicks dancing around in skimpy vinyl devil suits. But then Chickity China, the Chinese chicken shows up and, in a mind-blowing development, the whole thing turns into a riff on The Dukes of Hazard. Such cinematic daring can only be achieved by a true auteur like . . . wait a minute? This is directed by the guy who did the Charlie’s Angels movies?! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

8. The Beatles – Ticket to Ride [dir. Richard Lester]

Since the Beatles predated MTV by quite a bit, they had to look for other means of making music videos. They worked around this by incorporating the videos into movies. So in order to truly appreciate the video you need to have a little context. On it’s own, is seems like they’re innocently dicking around while skiing in the Alps. What’s really going on is that they’re innocently dicking around while skiing in the Alps so they can hide from a pair of mad scientists and the members of the Thuggee cult who are out to get them! It kind of gives the whole thing a darker feel when you know that, amidst all these shenanigans, the scientists are secretly planting a bomb in Ringo’s curling rock.

9. Geoff Berner – Iron Grey [dir. Pepper Sunlight Productions]

WARNING: This video contains graphic cop-on-accordion violence.

Geoff Berner and his accordion are always getting into trouble with the law. But he’s not gonna let the man stop him from pursuing romance with that lovely grey-eyed, salt-of-the-earth spark-welder. But he’s got trouble coming, ’cause the fuzz have his accordion on file and are on the look-out. It’s a bittersweet romance for the ages.

10. Besti Flokkurinn – Besta Lagið

Even out of context this video is pretty great. A pitch-perfect parody of those “We are the World”-style charity singles filled with deliberately vacuous politician-speak. When you know a little more about Iceland, it gets even better. For instance, in Icelandic Christmas folklore, there are 13 Santas or yule lads, so that “we only need one Santa” bit makes more sense.

But in the full context, the video goes from cool to pure awesome. Besti Flookurinn means “Best Party” and was a joke political party founded by a bunch of Icelandic punk singers. The above video was their campaign video for the 2010 Reykjavik elections. And they won! That’s right. The other political parties had become so tarnished by that whole entire-country-going-bankrupt-because-we-listened-to-Milton-Friedman thing that these guys actually won the election. That “we only need one Santa” guy; he’s the new mayor.

And in case you’re wondering, they did fulfill their promise to have free towels at the public swimming pools, thereby callously abandoning their promise not to fulfill any of their promises. What lying bastards!

Part 1: A-Ha to Besti Flokkurinn
Part 2: Bijelo Dugme to Bruce Cockburn
Part 3: The Coup to Finntroll
Part 4: Freezepop to The Imagined Village
Part 5: Insane Clown Posse to Corb Lund
Part 6: M.I.A. to My Chemical Romance
Part 7: Sinéad O’Connor to Public Enemy
Part 8: Pulp to Smashing Pumpkins
Part 9: Todd Snider to Suzanne Vega
Part 10: Julieta Venegas to Zemfira

North Star: The Life of Peter Camejo

2010-11-24T20:47:00.004-06:00

An article I wrote for Socialist Alternative.

Peter Camejo was a well-known political activist from his work in the Vietnam anti-war movement to his challenging of the two-party system with the Green Party and Ralph Nader. Two years after his death from lymphoma, his autobiography North Star: A Memoir has been published. It’s a good read, covering his whole life. In both its strengths and weaknesses, his life provides valuable lessons for future political activists.

He was born in 1939 in New York to Venezuelan parents and he grew up in both Venezuela and the United States. He describes how his childhood experiences in these countries resulted in his early political development:

“…at about thirteen, I was talking to my Aunt Milagro in Barquisimeto, and I told her I wished Venezuela were run by the United States because in the United States there were no poor people. She informed me that there were indeed poor people in the United States and that I had it exactly backward: people in Venezuela were poor because the United States did in fact run Venezuela by supporting our local dictator and controlling our economy.”

He was faced with a similar contradiction in that the dictionary definition of socialism: “production for use, not for profit, democratically run”, was very appealing - but the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship. These contradictions drew him to Trotskyist ideas and in 1958, he joined the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) and its youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance, while studying at MIT.

The SWP was the main Trotskyist party in the United States, having played an important role in the workers movement in the 1930s. By 1958, the party had gone into serious decline because of its wrong perspectives regarding the character of the postwar period. The SWP kept repeating mechanically the forecast of Leon Trotsky of imminent revolution and counterrevolution after World War II while in fact capitalism in the advanced countries and Stalinism were temporarily strengthened and stabilized on the basis of the massive postwar economic upswing. By the early 1960s the SWP was starting to revive on the basis of the emerging civil rights movement, and eventually the Vietnam anti-war movement.

Camejo got involved in civil rights organizing, where he marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama, and met with Malcolm X when he was still viewed as a pariah. He developed a reputation as a good public speaker during campaigns in defense of Cuba. By the time of the Vietnam anti-war movement he became the public face of the SWP.

His public speaking abilities were described by, Ken Hurwitz, a Democrat opponent during the anti-war movement, referring to “Peter Camejo, the Venezuelan revolutionary [who] had us all ready to write a press release of disassociation . . . People were listening. Certainly the majority wasn’t agreeing entirely with the revolutionary stance, but they were listening . . . It didn’t matter whether we were socialist revolutionaries or not. He made us hate the war perhaps more than we ever thought possible.”

Vietnam War

Camejo first came to prominence during the movement against the Vietnam War. In 1965, he moved to Berkeley and became active in the Vietnam Day Committee (VDC), founded by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.

Within the anti-war movement, there was a liberal trend that wanted to water down the anti-war content of the protests in favor of supporting Democratic candidates. There were also several smaller, sectarian trends that insisted on the movement adopting a full revolutionary program.

The SWP tried to use a coalition policy where different groupings and individuals would agree on a minimal program—in this case an immediate end to the war—in order to build a mass antiwar movement.

By 1966, the VDC had seriously declined as its founders retreated from the anti-war movement to support Democrats in the midterm elections and Camejo worked mostly in Berkeley in order to revive the antiwar movement. This hard work gave Camejo and the SWP prominence in the antiwar movement at the time.

Telegraph Avenue

The event that most prominently brought Camejo to the public eye was what became known as the “Battle of Telegraph Avenue.” On June 28, 1968, Camejo was involved with an SWP-initiated demonstration on Telegraph Avenue in support of the French general strike. This demo was attacked by the police which he describes in great detail in his autobiography North Star:

“This was probably one of the most preordained confrontations of the 1960s. Each side was waiting for the other to make a move. The police assumed we would give them a pretext for attacking. We had every intention not to give them one, so they would have to make a blatantly unprovoked assault.”

He knew that the police would attack the anti-war movement and that it was necessary to defend demonstrations from the police. However, he also understood that many people had illusions in the police and would take their side in a conflict. To defeat the police it was necessary to win people over.

He also had a similar understanding of the role of the Democratic Party as representative of big business. During the anti-war movement, he points out in North Star, that “the two-party system went to work, with the Democrats acting as though they supported the antiwar movement while they maneuvered to turn antiwar sentiment into electoral support for a party that would not only demobilize the movement but betray it.”

The media and Democratic politicians distorted the events to portray the demonstrators as the aggressors. Camejo and the SWP called further demonstrations against the police repression and he made sure they were carefully stewarded and only engaged with the police in self-defense. When the Democratic politicians tried to talk him in to stopping, he refused. He also skillfully used the increased media attention to put forward his views, and eventually won mass support.

On July 4, 1968, the city council allowed a demonstration without police interference. Despite, or because of, the lack of police, there was no violence.

Conflict With the SWP

After the Vietnam War ended, Camejo came into increasing conflict with the SWP leadership. As he writes in North Star:

“The crisis had begun in 1970 over which way the SWP would go: forward, evolving into an organization connected with the realities of national and international living struggles of real people; or inward, self-isolating from realities because those realities did not correspond to a preconceived idea ordained as the unchangeable truth.”

Although the SWP had played a positive role in the anti-war movement, it had problems dating back to its mistaken analysis at the end of World War II and had zig-zagged between various forms of opportunism and ultra-leftism.

An example of this was the SWP’s uncritical attitude towards Fidel Castro and Malcolm X, failing to explain the shortcomings of their positions. In Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, the SWP made an ultra-left call for “an independent African-American political party” instead of launching a campaign for a mass workers party.

In 1972, Jack Barnes became national secretary of the SWP, and along with his political clique ran an increasingly bureaucratic and cultish internal regime. This exacerbated the political problems and lead to various twists and turns in policy. This caused conflict between Camejo and the party leadership that came to a head during Camejo’s 1976 Presidential election campaign.

By the 1980s, the SWP made a completely mistaken “turn to industry” where they came up with an arbitrary definition of “working class” that emphasized industrial workers. The leadership put tremendous pressure on the mostly student or former student members of the SWP, without any union organizing experience, to get jobs as meat packers, textile workers, or coal miners where they were expected to stir their co-workers into action. In practice, this left them isolated.

Camejo had been involved with immigrant rights work in the 1970s and the new policy meant giving that up in order to organize garment workers he had never met before. This is when he left the SWP. This was part of a larger exodus and splits from the SWP in reaction to the Barnes clique and the “turn to industry.”

Those who left the party, Camejo included, became demoralized by the party’s arbitrary policy shifts and they drew the mistaken conclusion that the task of building a revolutionary party inherently leads to a top-down, anti-democratic culture.

Camejo concluded that the problems with the SWP stemmed from something “intrinsic” in the nature of Trotskyism and revolutionary Marxism, specifically the idea of a program. Trotsky worked on the basis of a transitional program. This meant a program that would include minimal, readily achievable demands, but also more advanced demands pointing in the direction of socialism and workers’ control.

For such a program to work it has to be rooted in the actual material conditions of the time and the increasingly radicalized mass consciousness of the working class in a period of intensified class struggle. Under the leadership of Jack Barnes, the SWP’s program was handed down from on high, and bore little relationship to reality. From this, Camejo concluded erroneously that any program must inherently be “dogmatic” and without basis in reality.

Nicaragua

Ironically, it was Camejo’s support for some of the opportunist turns of the SWP that also ultimately led him to leave the party.

In 1979, the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua had been overthrown by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), commonly known as the Sandinistas. Camejo and the SWP saw their role in Nicaragua as being to give support to the Sandinistas and condemned as “sectarian” any left criticism of their ideas or activities.

Camejo visited Nicaragua during this time for solidarity work and was inspired by their activities. He describes his work with the Sandinistas as the turning point that ultimately convinced him to leave the SWP, saying:

“It dawned on me—that is why this movement had won. They didn’t name their newspaper after some term from European history; they didn’t speak of “socialism” or “Marxism.” While the rest of the left of the 1960s and ’70s was in decline throughout Latin America, caught up in the rhetoric of European Marxism and the influence of Stalinism, the FSLN had delivered a great victory for freedom.”

However, it should be noted that, ultimately, the Sandinistas didn’t win. They attempted to go half-way to socialism by nationalizing some sectors of the economy, while leaving others under capitalist control, and failed to spread the revolution in Central and South America. This meant they weren’t able to resist the pressures of imperialism and bring about lasting change, and by 1990, the counterrevolutionary right-wing National Opposition Union was able to win the elections and undo most of what the Sandinistas accomplished.

Unfortunately, the features that Camejo most admired in the Sandinistas, such as their lack of a clear socialist program, also played a key role in their ultimate defeat.

Life Without a Program

After leaving the SWP Camejo drifted to the right, toward left liberal politics. He tried to bring about change by convincing big business to behave more responsibly. He got a job at Merrill Lynch, where he came up with the slogan “The IRA That Cares”. He set up programs like Progressive Asset Management, Inc. and the Eco-Logical Trust that tried to encourage socially responsible investment.

He made earnest efforts to get people to invest in environmentally-friendly businesses, to encourage businesses run by minorities and to get labor representatives on pension boards.

None of Camejo’s work was able to prevent Merrill Lynch from doing dirty deals with Enron among numerous other corporate crimes, however. Nor did it prevent Merrill Lynch from collapsing in the recent financial crisis and participating in the various scandals. As much as he would have liked to turn Merrill Lynch into a socially responsible company, he was still working within capitalism where the need for profit trumps good intentions.

Ralph Nader and the Green Party

When Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000 under the Green Party ticket, Camejo described the campaign as representing “the end of the Ice Age”. For the first time since the 1920s, a genuinely independent candidate was able to have a nation-wide impact in a presidential election.

This was connected with the rise in the anti-globalization movement, initiated by the protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999. Nader and the Green Party came to be seen as the political expressions of this movement. Through the Green Party, Camejo returned to active radical politics.

In 2003, California’s corrupt governor Gray Davis grew so unpopular that he became subject to a recall vote, resulting in a new election. Camejo ran for the Green Party on a left populist platform and he was the most successful third-party candidate in the election. He was also active in Matt Gonzalez’s left populist campaign for Mayor of San Francisco.

But the Green Party is a socially and politically heterogeneous organization. It includes genuine activists, as well as a large section of careerist, pro-business and NGO types. Even in 2000, Green Party councilors in Seattle defected to the Democrats to support Al Gore. And this happened at a time when Nader was leading super-rallies across the country with tens of thousands.

In 2004, Camejo ran for vice president as Nader’s running mate, and the Democrats went seriously on the offensive. They sent activists to Nader rallies for the sole purpose of blocking people from signing ballot papers. Ad campaigns were launched accusing Nader of being funded by the Republicans. Liberal celebrities, like Michael Moore and Bill Maher, attacked Nader. Camejo describes the attack:

“With the progressives as their front-line soldiers the Democrats then launched a multimillion-dollar onslaught of disruption against Nader. They brought more than twenty frivolous lawsuits simultaneously against the Nader campaign to tie us up in litigation we could not afford . . . Lawyers went to the homes of Nader campaign supporters and made false threats of possible arrests for backing Nader. They harassed petitioners, threatening them with legal actions. In Ohio they forced Nader volunteers to go to city hall to prove where they lived.”

In this situation the divisions within the Green Party became apparent. Right-wing Greens used undemocratic methods to get the Green Party to endorse David Cobb instead of Nader, despite the majority support for Nader among the party rank-and-file. Cobb himself refused to campaign in swing states because he didn’t want to “hurt the Democrats.” The result was that the federal funds for the Green Party were used to fund a non-campaign.

This attack on the Nader campaign pushed both Nader and Camejo to the left. During the election, Camejo worked to consolidate the left wing of the Green Party and published the “Avocado Declaration” calling on the Green Party to stick to its principles. Perhaps reflecting something from his youth, Camejo himself confessed that he considered himself to be a “watermelon: green on the outside, red on the inside”. He continued working to build the left in the Green Party until his death.

Breaking the Two-Party System

If there’s a unifying thread in the life of Peter Camejo, it’s his hostility to the big business two-party system. The title of his memoir, North Star, comes from the newspaper of the Liberty Party, an abolitionist party that fought the previous Democrat/Whig two-party system. The book also includes a well-written appendix on the origins of the modern two-party system and the various attempts to break it.

Socialist Alternative and Justice newspaper calls for the establishment of a mass party based on the working class, drawing together workers, young people, and activists from workplace, community, civil rights, environmental, and antiwar campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big business parties. This is not merely an electoral aim but must be linked to building struggle and a mass movement.

Unfortunately, Camejo never held this position. His opposition to “programs” meant that he focused on a vague electoral opposition to the Democrats and Republicans. This resulted in serious mistakes during the 2004 presidential election, such as Nader accepting the ballot lines of the right-wing Reform Party in some states.

Nonetheless Camejo was a tireless fighter against big business until the end. Even without a worked-out program, his electoral work with Nader represented a step in the right direction towards independence from the parties of big business. He also demonstrated an admirable perseverance against pressures from those parties, from the antiwar movement to the Nader campaign.

Under the two-party system, workers, young people, immigrants, the anti-war movement, environmental and gay rights movements, are effectively silenced. Camejo believed in the need to provide working people with a voice. Armed with the ideas of Marxism and the Committee for a Workers’ international (CWI), that’s what we must continue to do.

Happy Return to Standard Time!

2010-11-07T19:29:00.004-06:00

I know a lot of people don't like Daylight Savings Time. This is understandable because Daylight Savings Time kind of silly. However it does have one great advantage: the return to Standard Time. To celebrate this holiday I thought I would share with you what is inarguably the best (and only) return to Standard Time holiday specials on television. That is The Adventures of Pete and Pete episode: "Time Tunnel".

This episode captures all the things we love about the return to standard time. The extra hour (enough time to watch this episode twice with commercials). The fact that going back in time let's you rectify mistakes you may have made the first time round. The riboflavin. Although it does get the time wrong, since you're supposed to change the clocks at 2am not midnight, but that can be explained away by the power of imagination.

But most importantly, it introduced countless children to the phrase "No fog; no fun", a phrase that will forever be associated with the return to Standard Time. Happy return to Standard Time, everybody!

Clowns to the Center, Jokers to the Right

2010-11-04T21:29:00.003-05:00

After the Republican victories in the mid-term elections on Tuesday, the response from many people, liberals and Democrats mainly, has been to blame this on collective insanity. On the surface this explanation seems somewhat almost reasonable. After all, if you're so angry about Obama's bail-outs for big business why are you voting for the party responsible for Bush's bail-outs for big business? That's insane!

But, do you know what else is insane? Going to an outdoor rally with this sign:

I mean, come on! When you're outside is precisely when you're supposed to use your outside voice.

This sign, and the whole "Use Your Inside Voice" slogan, was, of course, part of Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" which later merged with Stephen Colbert's ironic "Rally to Keep Fear Alive" and became the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear".

For many people, this rally was viewed as the left-wing alternative to Glenn Beck's tea party "Rally to Restore Honor". But Jon Stewart went to great lengths to distance himself from anything that could be considered "left". The rally emphasized "compromise", "reaching across the aisle", "bipartisanship" (but what about third parties?), and, of course, the aforementioned "inside voices" (but Stewart at least had the sanity to not use his inside voice during his speech).

This centrism was best represented by a performance by Kid Rock and Shreyl Crow, who sang a nauseating paean to political inactivism.

Incidentally, the chorus to this song, "Screamin' on the left. Yellin' on the right. I'm sitting in the middle trying to live my life." was based on Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You", a song notorious for its popularity among sane people.

But let's get sane here. How could anybody think this sort of thing would be a good idea to convince people of your point of view? The "inside voice" stuff is sufficiently patronizing to turn off anybody who has illusions in the Republicans and the tea party, and the rush to the center is going to turn off anybody on the left. It's the worst of both worlds.

And this message came from Jon Stewart, the guy who was ranked "Most Influential Man of 2010" in the scientific study compiled by Ask Men. Not a good use of your influence, Jon.

So rather than equating sanity with compromise, let's take a sane look at what happened in the election. Do you know who has a sane take on the election? Political radicals! Not only, that, but political radicals on AM radio. Here is an interview with Ramy Khalil, Logan Steele, Keegan McCoy of Socialist Alternative about the elections, that you may find quite sane. They even use their inside voices (because the interview was conducted inside).

It's entirely reasonable for people to be pissed at Obama for the bailouts. In fact, I would go so car as to call this attitude "sane". The bailouts sucked. Why should the corporations responsible for the financial crisis get bailed out while the people they screwed over get nothing?

People wanted the same thing in this election as they did in 2008: change. Unfortunately, under a two-party system, the only way you can use elections for change is to vote for the other party.

The key phrase here is "under a two-party system". As things are now, there are two large parties based in the interest in big business. Their candidates are funded by big business, so they pass laws in the interests of big business. Even some of the third parties, like the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party, represent the interests of big business, even if they don't get the same level of funding.

For real change in the correct direction you need a party that is independent, not only of the Democrats and Republicans, but big business as a whole. Once again, the voice of sanity comes from the likes of Socialist Alternative, as viewed in the pamphlet "Challenging the Two-Party System: Can a Left Alternative to Corporate Politics Be Built" by Tony Wilsdon.

But if people who want change are voting for the more right wing of the two big business parties, shouldn't we respond by "reaching across the aisle" and engage the Republicans and tea party types in rational debate? Yes and no. Of course you should try to engage in rational debate, but that doesn't mean you need to "reach across the aisle". In fact the "use your inside voice" centrism is less rational than, say, arguing with a teabagger in favor of socialism.

For instance, consider this incredibly sane and rational debate between Socialist Alternative's Ramy Khalil and tea party activist Keli Carender. The odd thing is, unlike Jon Stewart at the "Rally to Restore Sanity", both the Marxist and the teabagger are using their inside voices. Actually, that's not odd at all, because Jon Stewart was outside and Ramy Khalil and Keli Carender were inside.

The full two-hour debate was too big to embed, but you can watch it here.

The central flaw with Jon Stewart's campaign for "sanity" was that it equates sanity with political moderation and inactivity. Which is a shame, because there is some definite insanity in the logic that compels people who are mad at corporate bailouts to vote for corporate tax cuts. But there is nothing insane about being mad at corporate bailouts. It's not the anger that's insane, it's the logic (or lack thereof) that causes people to vote Republican.

Similarly, there's nothing insane about opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or opposition to the attacks on public education. But there is something insane in the logic that leads anti-war activists to vote for John Kerry and teachers to vote for Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, when the only options presented to people in the ballot box and in the media are clowns to the center and jokers to the right, you're going to end up supporting some insane action.

Faced with that sort of insane logic, sometimes the only sane thing to do is to not compromise, get angry and use your outside voice indoors. For instance, you may have heard of this guy named Rick Santelli, a commentator for CNBC. He went on this insane pseudo-populist rant against bailing out people who lost their homes in the housing crisis. He was arguing that we shouldn't waste taxpayers (i.e. big business's) money on "the losers". This was all done in a way that made it sound like the people who lost their homes were an evil elite and wall street was the common man.

People who aren't thinking things through clearly might have listened to his rant, gotten angry about the bailouts for big business, and sided with this nutjob, completely ignorant of the fact that he was supporting tax cuts for big business and opposing bailouts for the people they screwed over.

If you're trying to deal with a guy like that, rational debate is futile. You pretty much have to get angry. And you have no choice but to use your outside voice indoors. And swear. Maybe you can bleep it out if it's on cable television, but you still have to say "Fuck you!" in this sort of situation. And faced with this sort of insane disingenuous pseudo-populism, I would highly recommend against having Kid Rock perform at a benefit. In fact you should make fun of people who have Kid Rock perform at a benefit. And definitely don't "reach across the aisle" and compromise.

In short, the truly sane response to someone like Rick Santelli is the one presented in the below video clip.

Jon Stewart Bashes CNBC and Rick Santelli
Uploaded by terell05. - Up-to-the minute news videos.

Now that video is one of the sanest takes out there on the financial crisis, and yet, by Jon Stewart's definition it's completely insane. Frankly, Jon Stewart shouldn't have held the "Rally to Restore Sanity". That guy up there making fun of CNBC should have held it. Then we'd all be better off.

Math for People Who Don't Do Math Good

2010-10-25T21:35:00.004-05:00

I don't need to tell you that the state of our mathematics education is deplorable. For some reason New York Magazine does need to tell you. A few days ago they released an article entitled "The Ten Most Ridiculous Classes Currently Offered at Liberal-Arts Colleges" that showed the terrible state of mathematical literacy amongst writers New York Magazine.

In order to find the ten (10) classes in question, the magazine assembled a panel of five (5) experts to read random course catalogs until they found something that sounded ridiculous. How ridiculous are they? So ridiculous that the authors filed their article under the New York Magazine sections for fuzzy math and math for people who don't do math good.

Actually, the classes they found weren't very ridiculous at all. But the fact that they didn't realize these were perfectly legit shows the disconcerting lack of mathematical understanding in this country. It's sort of like how Iran-Contra proves that Ronald Reagan was write about the evils of big government. The fact that the article decrying the state of mathematical literacy demonstrated a complete lack of mathematical literacy shows that the authors' hysteria was justified.

Let's take a closer look.

The Ten Most Ridiculous-Sounding Math Classes Currently Offered at Liberal-Arts Colleges
October 19, 2010

Every year, liberal-arts majors anxiously scour their college's course listings looking for classes that will fulfill their math requirement but aren't so, you know, math-y. Here's what they're signed up for this year.

Bear this bit in mind. All ten of the below classes are, according to the authors of the article, "not math-y" and just a cheap excuse for liberal-arts types to fulfill their math requirement without doing any math. Even if this was the case, there's not much of a problem. If you're trying to become an actor/waiter, then knowing advanced math isn't going to help much anyway, so you might as well have fun. But even if you accept that all college students should learn legitimate math, how do you explain the list's inclusion of . . .

10. Topology: The Nature of Shape and Space: "In geometry we ask: How big is it? How long is it? But in topology we ask: Is it connected? Is it compact? Does it have holes?" [Sarah Lawrence]

You're not getting off to a very good start, New York Magazine. Topology is a standard math course that appears in pretty much every college and university in the world, not just liberal-arts colleges. It can get pretty tough, too. You know that problem, the Poincaré conjecture, that was part of the Clay Math Institutes seven biggest unsolved problems of all time until Grigori Perelman solved it in 2003? That was topology.

The only problem I can see with that course is that the description isn't very detailed. It lists the sorts of things topologists look for without getting at the main point that topology considers shapes to be equivalent if you warp them, but not if you break them, so size doesn't get preserved, but compactness, connectedness and number of holes does. The fact that that's not included in the description makes it look a bit silly . . . at least until you click on that link it gives and read the complete course description.

9. The Mathematics of Chance: "Most topics are introduced in a case-study fashion, usually by reading an article in a current periodical such as the New York Times." [Bard]

If you think topology is a ridiculous not-so-math-y branch of math, then check out this other ca-ray-zee thing called "probability". Once again the actual course description is a lot longer than what appears in the article. But they singled out the most ridiculous part of the course: the fact that students are expected to (gasp) apply probability to real life scientific studies! I mean, how crazy is that? Why are students wasting their time taking classes that apply math to real life when they could be doing . . . uh . . . I don't know, irrelevant stuff, I guess.

8. Mathematics in Many Cultures: "Mathematical ideas are found in many cultures, among both literate and non-literate peoples. This course examines both mathematics and the role it plays in the cultures. Examples chosen from the mathematical ideas of present-day peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, as well as historic Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Islam and China." [Pomona]

So now we finally get to something that resembles the article's opening paragraph. It's a math history class, rather than a math class, that fulfills the math distribution requirement for non-math-majors. Oh the horror. Still, it looks like a perfectly good math history class and, given that it's likely to cover different numerical systems it's at least going to get into some legitimate math as well. Maybe it would be better suited for a humanities requirement than a math requirement. Maybe.

7. The Magic of Numbers: "This course will explore the beauty and mystery of mathematics through a study of the patterns and properties of the natural numbers 1, 2, [and] 3." [Harvard]

Okay, now you're talking! And at an ivy league university, no less! Magic? Beauty? Where's the actual math? Oh, its in the part of the course description the panel of five experts decided not to include. Oh, and it's actually a perfectly respectable discrete math course dealing with things like prime numbers, factorials and binomial coefficients.

But, man isn't it insane that they're doing a course only about the numbers "1, 2 [and] 3"? I mean, there are an infinite number of natural numbers, man. Wait a minute, why is the word "and" in brackets? That should to mean it wasn't in the original version but the panel of five experts thought it would clarify things to insert it. So what does the original version say? Oh, it says "This course will explore the beauty and mystery of mathematics through a study of the patterns and properties of the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, ....".

Well then, it is just an ordinary discrete math course. As for the "magic" and "beauty" stuff, that just means the professor is enthusiastic about the subject, which is a good thing.

6. Models of Life: "In particular, we will ask such questions as: How do you model the growth of a population of animals? How can you model the growth of a tree? How do sunflowers and seashells grow?" [Kenyon]

Wow! This is just like those crazy "math for poets" classes only it's "math for biologists"! Good luck trying to apply math to that pseudo-science!

5. Mathematical Origamist’s Toolkit: "Topics include modular origami and how this models the creation of polyhedra and coloring of graphs, comparison of origami-axiomatic constructions to straight-edge and compass constructions, the combinatorics of possible crease patterns, the mathematics of origami design (circle packing, optimization), matrix models for paperfolding, spherical geometry, Descartes’ Theorem, and Gaussian curvature." [Hampshire]

Time to be serious, now. The title of the article, "The Ten Most Ridiculous-Sounding Math Classes Currently Offered at Liberal-Arts Colleges", does, indeed apply to this course. The class sounds ridiculous. If you are unfamiliar with the mathematical study of origami, this might sound like a class where people make paper cranes and call it math.

But that doesn't mean it is. If you look at the description, you find that there is a lot of incredibly intense math involved. On top of that, if you are familiar with mathematical origami theory you would know that it is an important developing field that NASA depends on to get their space telescopes to work. That's because you need to fold the lenses for transportation, and be able to unfold them and still have them work. This needs to be done by carefully selecting creases in the right locations, i.e. origami.

Furthermore, let's go back to the first paragraph of the article. This isn't a course for liberal-arts students to fulfill their math requirement without doing anything "math-y". It's a summer high school course for gifted high school students to learn about advanced mathematics.

4. Mathematics and Narrative: "Many literary works (Arcadia, Proof, and Uncle Petros and the Goldbach Conjecture) use mathematics as an integral part of their narrative. Movie and television narratives such as Good Will Hunting and Numb3rs are also mathematically based. Nonfiction works about mathematics and mathematical biographies like Chaos, Fermat's Enigma, and A Beautiful Mind provide further examples of the connection between mathematics and narrative. " [Vassar]

I took a course like this at Brandeis that even included a lot of the same books. It was taught by a math teacher, but it counted as an English class, not a math class. I suppose the panel of experts would at least admit that this is a pretty neat idea for an English class, and their issue with it stems from the fact that it's listed in the math department.

And this time, they're right. Oh, no, wait. They're wrong. Maybe they'd be right if it wasn't for the little message at the end of the course description that they kindly neglected to include in their article: "Open only to freshmen; satisfies college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar." So this is the exact opposite of a class for liberal-arts students to fulfill their math requirement without being math-y. It's a class for math majors to fulfill their writing requirement while being math-y.

3. Borges and Mathematics: "Jorge Luis Borges was one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Many of his short stories and essays were concerned with philosophical, metaphysical, and mathematical questions. The thesis motivating this course is that if we know the mathematics that Borges referred to, then we will read him differently, and we will read him better." [Bennington]

Hey, it's another interdisciplinary class. This time dealing with the Argentinean magical realist writer Jorge Luis Borges. The esteemed panel of five experts seem to be of the opinion that interdisciplinary stuff is inherently bad. Of course, if they were familiar with Borges they might know he incorporated a lot of mathematical concepts in his writing that could easily form the basis for a good class. If they didn't know that, they'd figure out had they bothered to look at the course announcement on the website.

So this class is covering the combinatorial implications of a Borges story "Library of Babel" about a library containing every possible book with every possible collection of letters. And there's other stuff dealing with group theory and the mathematical concepts of the infinite and infinitessimal. So it's basically a regular math class but with magical realist word problems. Considering how strained most math word problems are, that comes of as perfectly reasonable. Not as good Sarah Greenwald's Simpsons and Futurama talks but still good.

2. Mathematics and Science as Art in Contemporary Theatre: "Playwrights such as Tom Stoppard, Rinne Groff, Michael Frayn, and others have effectively explored mathematical and scientific themes for artistic purposes. Through readings and exercises, and by conducting labs and staging scenes, this class will gain some first-hand insight into the complementary ways in which science and art aim to seek out their respective truths." [Middlebury]

Wow, this panel of five experts must really hate interdisciplinary classes. This time it's not even listed as a math class, but in a special "interdisciplinary" section. Apparently Middlebury College has an interdisciplinary first-year seminar program that includes courses like this. It has nothing to do with filling the math requirement with a theatre class. It's about fulfilling the interdisciplinary requirement with an interdisciplinary class.

What makes this classes inclusion on the list extra-inexplicable is that it isn't even included in the list of math courses. So to even find the class, they would have to go to the interdisciplinary section and should have immediately found out about all of this.

1. Meaning, Math, And Motion: "Quoting a charming articulation by Kinsman (a mathematician-turned-oceanographer, in the preface to Wind Waves): 'To the beginner, science is a conversation that has been in progress for a very long time.' Our collective work is to catch up on the conversation." [Evergreen]

Somebody really needs to explain to the writers of this article what an ellipsis is. Not only did they think "1, 2, 3, ...." means the same thing as "1, 2 [and] 3", they threw out a big chunk of the Kinsman quote without using one, in such a way as to remove its actual content. Here's the full course description.

This is a bit of an unorthodox math class. It's also interdisciplinary, but it's between math, physics and linguistics. All of these are perfectly legitimate sciences, making it more serious a math class than the artsy classes earlier in the list. As for what it's really about, look to the line where they explain what they mean when they say "catch up on the conversation": "which means being deliberate about how we calculate and convince, speak and write, listen and read, and also means acquiring the science content and process skills required to judge what is being argued".

The course includes plenty of serious math, taking students through first-semester calculus, first-semester physics and first-semester linguistics in once class. And it's being done with the intent on improving scientific and mathematical reasoning in everyday life.

I can't help but get the impression that the authors think that math means calculus and that everything else is poetry. If that's the case then math is no more important to real life than English. Most people will never have to do integration by parts when they finish calculus just as most people will never have to read Dickens when they finish English. Mathematical reasoning is the main application that math has to everyday life, so this is a perfectly reasonable course for somebody who doesn't actually want to be a math major, rather than forcing them to take a straight calculus class they'll forget about afterwards.

Lack of mathematical and scientific reasoning is a much bigger problem than lack of calculus. That's what causes people to take intelligent design seriously. That's what causes people to take demagogues like Glenn Beck seriously. And that's what causes a panel of five experts writing for New York Magazine to list a bunch of perfectly respectable math courses and conclude:

This is why Asia is winning, by the way.

3.5 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

2010-10-21T21:35:00.005-05:00

Living in America can sometimes give people a skewed idea of the way things are. For instance, one might get the impression that it's normal to refer to a health-care bill that forces people to buy health insurance from big HMOs as "progressive". You might think it's normal that when the government introduces austerity measures that the only protesters are Teabaggers demanding more austerity. And yet, in France, the government austerity measures that pale in comparison to Obama's have provoked a 3.5 million to take to the streets in strikes and protests.

Seriously, the French worker's willingness to take to the streets to defend their standard of living makes us Americans look like a bunch of Cheez Whiz-eating surrender monkeys.

It doesn't help that American news sources have such terrible coverage. For instance, polls show that 70% of the French population supports the strike. But, amongst the people interviewed in this atrocious New York Times article, 100% oppose the strike. I guess Ann Coulter was right about the New York Times being biased. She was just wrong about the direction.

The mainstream British press is occasionally willing to provide better take on the events. Even better is the not-so-mainstream press.

So here's what you missed out on.

The protests began in September against President Nicolas Sarkozy's attempts to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67. This gets reported as being from 60 to 62 in order to make the workers look greedy, but 60 is the age at which one can receive a partial pension. But the fact that an attack on pensions resulted in a general strike is mighty impressive already.

Really, though, the retirement issue was more of the straw that broke the camel's back. The protests a few days ago included a large number of high school students and the issues were stretched to include things like the "First Job Contract" that says that employers can fire workers under the age of 26 without a reason. These are all part of a series of austerity measures Sarkozy is attempting to impose on the French workers, in conjunction with massive tax cuts for the rich. Sarkozy (And Tina Fey) defends the measures on the grounds that people live too long now and can't afford the luxury of their current standard of living, while completely ignoring the impact that the tax cuts for the rich may have.

But here in America, the Tea Party Protesters are demanding more cuts for the rich. And what's the left up to? Holding a "Rally to Restore Sanity" with the help of Oprah, the chick who thinks you shouldn't vaccinate your children because they'll get autism. Okay, there was the October 2 March for Jobs, which had some good demands and a sizable socialist contingent. But even then, most of the organizers were using it as a "get out the vote (for Democrats)" campaign. Frankly, I think general strikes can be a bit more effective.

I should note that this doesn't mean that France is inherently better than America, or that we should all just go to France if we don't like things here. After all Sarkozy had to come to power somehow.

He started out as the Interior Minister for the right-wing government of Jacques Chirac. His first claim to fame concerned an incident in 2005 in which two Arab teenagers died being chased by the police during an "identity check". Sarkozy's response was to declare that they deserved it because they were involved in a burglary. When he was later informed that they were, in fact, not involved in a burglary (or any crime), Sarkozy refused to retract his statement on the grounds that baseless accusations he pulled out of his ass are more important than the truth. This led to riots, which led to more police repression, which led to more riots.

Sarkozy's response to the riots was to call them names like "racaille" (scum) and blame the whole thing on Islamic fundamentalists (also something he pulled out of his ass).

While Sarkozy's aggressive racism mysteriously failed to solve the race relations problems in France it was able to encourage enough racism among French whites that he was able to win the 2007 French presidential elections on a platform of making France more like America. The fact that the "Socialist" Party candidate had the exact same reactionary economic policies didn't hurt either. And I guess being married to Carla Bruni may have had some effect.

So yeah, France is not perfect, and the anti-immigrant racism there makes the anti-immigrant racism in Arizona look like slightly less aggressive anti-immigrant racism in comparison.

But . . .

Five months later, Sarkozy was already faced with the biggest public transport strike since the general strike of 1995. And by 2009 there was already a general strike that was bigger than the ine in 1995. So, the French people may have allowed the greater of two evils to win, while us Americans elected the lesser of two evils. But they were willing to fight back once said evil started acting, you know, evil.

With the economic collapse, the. By now, Sarkozy's approval rating is down at 30% compared to Obama's 47% (although Sarkozy's approval among the people interviewed in that New York Times article is 100%).

Sarkozy's response has been to do what he does best: try to deflect attention away from his horribleness by blaming an oppressed minority. It was blaming the Arabs that brought him to power. Who is his new enemy? The Gypsies! Sorry, I mean, The Gypsies!

And you know what? This time, it didn't work, as evidenced by the 3.5 million people in the streets who were much more concerned about losing public services than being attacked by Gypsy Bandits. This includes many people who were previously swayed by Sarkozy's race-baiting. So if the 3.5 million Frenchmen can move beyond their prejudices and act in solidarity, why can't we?

The REAL 15 Manliest Movies

2010-10-13T20:40:00.008-05:00

Recently I discovered an entry on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes entitled Manliest Movies. This is allegedly a list of the 15 manliest movies of all time, as compiled by a panel of five experts (they're all men), Ryan Fujitani, Jeff Giles, Luke Goodsell, Tim Ryan, and Alex Vo.

Disappointingly, all they came up with were a bunch of movies about guys shooting people. I must say, this gives a completely unrealistic portrayal of what it means to be a man. The notion that men only care about violence stems from a misinterpretation of Desmond Morris's book The Naked Ape. Specifically it stems from the interpretation that the book isn't a load of hokum.

With that in mind, I thought I'd compile a list myself of the real 15 manliest movies.

15. The Social Network

The Rotten Tomatoes list can be forgiven for excluding this movie, because it came out after the list was created. Nonetheless, The Social Network is a much more realistic portrayal of male aggression than anything on that list. While Schwarzenegger and Stallone may express their manliness by shooting everything that moves, real men express their manliness by bitching about their ex-girlfriends on the internet.

Some may say that the shoot-em-up movies on the Rotten Tomatoes list are more manly because of their lack of realism. They supposedly represent what men wish they were. But in The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker get everything they wish. Zuckerberg becomes a billionaire for inventing a slightly-less-crappy version of MySpace and Parker becomes a billionaire for hanging out with Zuckerberg. So when they can to whatever they want, do they go around shooting things? No! They get blowjobs in public bathrooms and snort coke off of chick's bellies. Like a man! Come on Arnold and Sylvester. You know you'd do the same.

The Social Network even features an appearance of the ultimate man's man, Larry Summers. And the fact that he's one of the less disgustingly misogynistic characters in the movie just shows how manly this movie is.

14. Cube

Of course, if Larry Summers is to be believed (he's not), what distinguishes men from women is that men are better at math. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Canadian horror movie Cube.

The movie is your usual story of a bunch of two-dimensional characters trapped in a three-dimensional building where they're forced to factor three-digit numbers . . . or die!!! One of the two-dimensional characters is a female mathematician named Leaven, who appears at first to be the one who can save them. But, after a painful rant about permutations, it becomes clear (to the audience, at least) that she doesn't know what she's talking about. On top of that she starts acting like P vs. NP affects factoring three-digit numbers and claims that the time it would take to perform a simple task like factoring 567 into primes (3⁴x7) is "astronomical".

And then, of course, a man comes in and saves the day. Yup the retarded guy turns out to be an idiot savant who can determine whether or not numbers like 567, 898 and 545 are powers of primes. Imagine that! Thank goodness there was a man around, or else they'd all be dead.

Now, some might claim that this horrible math on the writer André Bijelic, rather than the character of Leaven. This is ignoring one important fact. André Bijelic is a man and Leaven is a woman. Larry Summers has spoken, thankyouverymuch.

Clip from Cube (1997) from Daniel Koelsch on Vimeo.

13. Antz

One of the big problems with the narrow-minded Rotten Tomatoes list is that it doesn't adequately consider that masculinity is expressed differently in different cultures. For instance in ant culture, men are submissive drones. With that notion of masculinity, Woody Allen is a far better representative of the gender than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So it's entirely fitting that Woody Allen would star in a movie about ants. I'm sorry, antz. Allen plays the ultimate man's ant'z role as a whiny neurotic, i.e. every Woody Allen character ever, but as an ant. Meanwhile the much more aggressive lady ant J.Lo does the heavy lifting, which in ant terms, is very feminine. Even when Woody Allen does lead his quasi-Marxist rebellion against the status quo (actual quote from the movie: "the workers control the means of production!"), it's ultimately to defend the Queen Jane Curtin against an evil general. But subservience to the queen is also very masculine for antz. Keep up the good work, bro!

12. Jurassic Park

You may be thinking "What does this have to do with manliness? It's about all technology being evil and inevitably resulting in people being eaten by dinosaurs! What does that have to do with masculinity?" The answer lies in the circumstances that cause technology to be evil.

You see, when they clone the dinosaurs, they make sure they're all female so they won't be able to reproduce and get out of the cages. But as Ian Malcom (a male mathematician) points out, "life finds a way". Or more accurately, masculinity finds a way. The female dinosaurs willed themselves into becoming men so they could reproduce. It was just that will to manliness that caused everything to go wrong.

You may now be thinking "But that wouldn't have happened if they had used emu or alligator DNA instead of frog DNA to fill in the gaps in the genetic code. And having Newman from Seinfeld shut off the electric fence probably played a bigger role in the dinosaurs escape anyway. How is that life finding away?" But you are forgetting a crucial fact: in movies about why man shouldn't play God, you aren't supposed to think about why things actually go wrong. You're just supposed to think of the message, however illogical: in this case "Manliness overcomes all obstacles!"

11. Hard Candy

If you want to make a movie that's really for men, you have to find something that men are in a unique position to relate to. So it all comes to that one big biological difference between the genders. As such, Jeff Kohlver, the main character in Hard Candy, undergoes a uniquely male experience.

Maybe not all men can relate to what Kohlver's gone through. In fact most men probably can't. I know I can't. If you can, there's probably something wrong with you, you horrible person. But the point is, this is a movie that men, and only men, can relate to, even if it's not all men.

10. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Hard Candy director David Slade would go on to direct an even manlier movie five years later, with the third installment in the Twilight series. The Twilight series a whole, is one of the most man-friendly series out there, but in Eclipse, it reached its peak.

There are basically two ways men can go about finding a woman. One way is emotional manipulation, playing hard to get using a system of "negs" to make the woman feel worthless if she doesn't want to be with you for all eternity. This is represented by Edward the vampire. The other way is by brute force, insisting that the woman loves you no matter how many times she says no, and picking fights with anyone who gets in your way. This is represented by Jacob the werewolf. And in Eclipse they come head to head to determine Bella the human's fate, with little input from Bella herself (because women thinking for themselves is very un-Mormon).

Eclipse doesn't resolve which of those two methods works best. Later on the series we learn that emotional manipulation is the best way to get the girl while brute force is the best way to get the girl's infant daughter. But once we get to Eclipse, we do know, for a fact, that embodying the worst aspects of masculinity are the only way to get the girl.

9. 8 ½

For all its surrealism, Fellini's 8 ½ is a fairly simple story. Guido's a film-maker who runs out of ideas. As such he gets exiled to a high-class spa where he's surrounded by tons of beautiful women until he finds inspiration. If only all men could receive such punishment for not being able to do your job.

The movie is, itself semi-autobiographical. Guido's character is based on Fellini himself, who similarly ran out of ideas. His solution? To make a movie set in a high-class spa with tons of beautiful women. So whether you're thinking of the movie itself, or the act of making the movie, 8 ½ represents the ultimate male fantasy.

8. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

Actually, scratch that last one. This movie represents the ultimate male fantasy. I mean what man hasn't wanted to go galavanting about the country in search of his stolen bike while helping an escaped convict, hitching a lift from a ghost, watching the sunrise in a model dinosaur, going to the Alamo, riding a bucking bronco, facing off against a biker gang and, last but certainly not least, crashing a Twisted Sister music video shoot? I mean, come on! That's practically a lit of things all men want to do.

In addition to being the ultimate male fantasy, this is also the ultimate female fantasy, the ultimate hermaphrodite fantasy, the ultimate intersex fantasy, the ultimate smismar fantasy, the ultimate genderless single-celled organism fantasy, the fantasy for the single-gender aliens from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, the ultimate fantasy for all three genders of those alternate universe aliens in Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves and the ultimate fantasy for any genders I may have missed. I mean, it's Twisted Sister!

But for the purposes of this list, it's only that first one that matters.

7. Pineapple Express

This is part of a recently invented hyper-masculine genre called "bromance". It's like romance, but without all those pesky women interfering with the characters' manliness. Pineapple Express actually does have some female characters, namely Seth Rogen's girlfriend, but the underlying message of the movie, one that the characters repeat throughout the movie, is "bros before hos".

Seth Rogen may have a girlfriend and Danny McBride may have a wife, but they come to learn what really matters in life; male bonding. Relations between men and woman are one thing, but the important thing is the male bonding between a guy, his pot dealer and his pot dealer's pot dealer. Provided that the two pot dealers are men.

6. Top Gun

The trouble with the bromance genre is that it doesn't go all the way. If you really want to make an all-man romance, it has to be a gay romance. That's just the way it is. If you're not gay, then you will be dependent on women for at least one aspect of your life. So to be truly manly, homosexuality's the only way to go.

Top Gun makes a lot of steps in the right direction, first by casting Tom Cruise as the lead actor. They still couldn't be explicit that the characters are gay, because Cruise is a notoriously litigious closet case. In order to avoid offending Cruise's religious sensibility's the movie never makes it explicit that it's about Tom Cruise abandoning women in favor of a manly gay relationship with Iceman. But they made sure to put in enough clues to make it clear that that's what's going on.

Don't believe me? Well, then maybe you'll believe Quentin Tarantino!

5. Junior

The battle of the sexes was summarized in the musical Annie, Get Your Gun with a song called "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better". For men to truly win the battle they have to be able to do anything a woman can do better. But in real life, women may be better than men at some things, while men may be better at others, and it may also vary from individual to individual rather than representing the entire gender. However, the laws of biology dictate that there is at least one thing that women can do better than men: give birth.

Or can they?

It figures that the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger would star in the movie that suggest that yes, men can even give birth better than women. The fact that the folks at Rotten Tomatoes chose Predator over this as their Schwarzenegger entry completely boggles the mind.

4. The Room

Man, this movie is so manly that one of the actors is named Stestosterone or something like that!

More importantly, it gets at the underlying sentiments that drive all attempts at manliness: women are evil. Johnny just wants to be an ordinary man, doing ordinary man things. You know, like tossing around the old pigskin, wearing tuxedos and tossing around the old pigskin while wearing tuxedos. But his future wife, Lisa is tearing him apart (because she's a woman)!

Even though it's made entirely clear that Johnny is a really great guy who likes puppies! And he can provide for Lisa, which she clearly can't do for herself (because she's a woman)! And Lisa's mother Claudette can't provide for her either because she definitely has breast cancer (because she's a woman)! And the other female character Michelle just sort of randomly shows up in their house and makes out with some guy and contributes nothing to the plot (because she's a woman)!

Actor Tommy Wiseau ultimately captures the heartbreak of all men. Come on women! Stop tearing us apart!

3. Antichrist

"A crying woman is a scheming woman. False in legs, false in thighs, false in breasts, teeth, hair and eyes."

Lars Von Trier is the only director ever to win the esteemed award for "the most misogynist movie from the self-proclaimed biggest director in the world" at the Cannes Film Festival. That's because the award was made for the sole purpose of being given to Antichrist, the single manliest horror movie of all time. You think Ash is manly. Well Willem Dafoe's character is so manly his name is "He".

The movie is about a couple of abstract representations of masculinity and femininity named "He" and "She" (Charlotte Gainsbourg) respectively, who decide to camp out in the woods. Being a horror movie, horrible things follow. All of this stems from the fact that She is a fucking psycho (because She's a woman)! He suggested that He and She go to the cabin so that She could get over the grief of their son's suicide, but then He discovers that She drove their son to suicide by making him wear his shoes on the wrong feet (I think. The movie didn't make a whole lot of sense). Once She hits He in the balls with a two-by-four, makes him ejaculate blood, ties a whetstone to his leg and cuts off her own clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors (because She's a woman) He has no choice but to kill her, just as we must kill all women. Because we're men!

WARNING: Do not watch the following video clip under any circumstances!!!

2. Gayniggers From Outer Space

Despite Lars Von Trier winning that award, he still loses out in the game of manly movies to the only Danish movie not directed by him. I speak, of course, of Morton Lindberg's science fiction classic Gayniggers From Outer Space.

Lindberg draws on many of the same themes as Von Trier, but in a much more concrete fashion. While Antichrist features an abstract representation of masculinity who has to kill an abstract representation of femininity, the gay niggers from outer space have to kill every single woman on the face of the Earth, in order to liberate men from their oppression.

The Gayniggers are much, much more intelligent than anybody else in the universe, and live in a world where men can express themselves and be as when they were born. It's a perfect society, without the presence of women. But then they discover a planet called "Earth". And sir, there is something terrible going on there. There is, pardon me, female creatures on the planet! Female creatures. We haven't dealt with a case of this magnitude in many years. They decide that "we will not tolerate any oppression of our male brothers anywhere in the universe. Let's go and terminate these evil female creatures and make planet Earth a gay place to stay" So they send a team of elite gayniggers down to Earth to shoot all of the women with their ray guns. The newly liberated men of earth then immediately fall in love with the gayniggers and everybody lives happily ever after.

I mean the only way you could get a manlier movie would be to actually put the words "man" and "movie" in the title!

Gayniggers from Outer Space from bobster on Vimeo.

1. Man With the Movie Camera

Like, I said, it's right there in the title. MAN. With the MOVIE Camera.

Don't believe me. Well then, I refer you to a little thing called the Bechdel Rule. This is a completely scientific method for determining the manliness of a movie. If the movie 1) Features two or more female characters (that's characters, not extras) 2) Has the female characters actually talk to each other and 3) has the female characters talk to each other about something besides men, then it passes the Bechdel test so, it fails the test of manliness (because Alison Bechdel is a woman)!

Man With the Movie Camera fails the Bechdel test, and hence passes the manliness test, on all three counts. 1) There are no female characters because it's a weird experimental movie that doesn't have any characters, per se. 2) Even if there were two or more female characters they wouldn't talk to each other because it's a silent movie (without intertitles). And 3) if there were two or more female characters and they did talk to each other you just know they'd be talking about men. Why? Because that's what the movie's about. Like I said, it's right there in the title.

Dziga Vertov - The man with the movie camera (1929)

So, Messrs. Fujitani, Giles, Goodsell, Ryan and Vo, I hope this opened your minds as to what really makes a movie manly. And maybe the next time you're getting together with the guys, you can check out one of these movies for your male bonding and whatnot.

COTTIFOTI: Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck

2010-10-07T21:08:00.003-05:00

Hey, everyone! I'm starting a new feature on my blog called "Check Out This Thang I Found On Teh Internetz" or COTTIFOTI, for short. The purpose of this of this feature is to mooch off of the hard work that other people did.

For our first entry, I will be mooching off of one Jonathan McIntosh of the website Rebellious Pixels who has created a video called "Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in 'Right Wing Radio Duck'". It's a great mash-up of Donald Duck cartoons and Glenn Beck. It starts with Donald getting fired and having his house foreclosed (based on real Donald Duck cartoons where this actually happened), and he finds solace in Glenn Beck's seemingly populist messages. Then Glenn Beck starts acting like Glenn Beck, and then, well, why don't you just check out this thang I found on teh internetz . . .

The first thing I like about this is how good the mash-up job is. If it wasn't for the specific references to Glenn Beck and the newspaper headline that says "Obama bails out wall street. Home foreclosures continue to skyrocket", it would feel like an actual Donald Duck cartoon. Even the message at the end that articulates why he's not violating any copyright laws is made in the style of a Disney cartoon's closing credits.

But what elevates this video above other thangz on teh internetz (like this giraffe fight) is the way it takes down Glenn Beck. Not the fact that it takes him down, the way it does it. Anyone can tear down Glenn Beck, because he's clearly off his rocker. But "Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck" provides a much more nuanced explanation of what's wrong with Beck, and right-wing Tea Party populism in general. And it does it in a way that explains why people are drawn to those ideas. And it does all of that by splicing together Donald Duck cartoons.

First of all, at the beginning you have Beck making these populist statements about the government being in bed with wall street and the fat cats screwing people over. But by the end he's completely contradicting those very sentiments by saying that people who lost their homes deserved it and should just get a job. And both of those parts come from actual Glenn Beck rants.

That's just the nature of right-wing populism. How do you sound like a man of the people while arguing in favor of giving all power to big business. By rapidly changing your position at the drop of a hat. Also, by blaming everything on the Mexicans.

For contrast, around the time this video came out, there was a Daily Show episode, where John Stewart was talking about the mass anti-cuts protests throughout Europe. You'd think Stewart would have pointed to this as an example that Americans should follow, especially given that he was trying to promote his anti-Glenn Beck "Rally to Restore Sanity". But instead, he proposed a "mob swap" that portrayed the European demonstrators as being just as crazy as Glenn Beck. So the legitimate fear people had about their jobs was lumped together with the paranoia about Obama being a Nazi-Communist-Muslim with a crazy reverend.

Apparently Stewart's definition of "sanity" is based on the notion that the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims. But as this other thang I found on teh internetz clearly demonstrates, that notion is completely fucking insane.

McIntosh's video, on the other hand, has a much saner take on Glenn Beck. He also did a Buffy/Twilight mash-up that's a far more effective critique of the Twilight series than the usual "emo is for fags" explanation. And it's nice to see someone go that extra distance.

So for John Stewart, and anyone else who rightly thinks Glenn Beck is full of shit, but limits their criticism to "that Glenn Beck sure is crazy", I have some advice for you. Check Out This Thang I Found On Teh Internetz.