Politics

Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

June 4, 2020 1 Comment

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Music, Politics, Random Musings, Rants

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Rush Limbaugh’s stupid Covid-19 comments are going to get people killed

March 28, 2020 1 Comment

It’s one thing to be a rabble-rousing contrarian. It’s quite another to engage in dangerous rhetoric that will get people killed. And Rush Limbaugh’s recent rhetoric on the Cvid-19 outbreak absolutely will get people sick, and possible dead. This morning, Salon reported: On Friday, the 69-year-old Rush Limbaugh argued that health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cannot be trusted because they are part of “the Deep State” and have an anti-Trump agenda. In audio that Media Matters has posted on its website, embedded above, Limbaugh can be heard on Friday telling listeners, “We’ve talked about the Deep State all these years since Trump was elected — the Trump-Russia collusion, the FBI — well,…
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Contributed Posts, Politics, Rants

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Neil Cavuto does not understand Captain America, or America

June 3, 2017 5 Comments

It’s perhaps unsurprising when a Fox news host misunderstands something simply because it wears red, white, and blue. Last night, Fox News host Neil Cavuto and guests said Wonder Woman had been rendered unpatriotic because her costume in the new movie is red, gold and blue rather than red, white and blue, and that there was “very little reference to America at all” in the movie. Nevermind that Wonder Woman is an Amazonian, not an American — finally, a birth certificate controversy with real meat on its bones! But what struck me were their passing comments about Captain America, long one of my favorite Marvel heroes and a character launched into new levels of amazing thanks to both the work of Ed Brubaker and the…
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Comics & Graphic Novels, Politics

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Someone shot up my friend’s workplace – and it should scare you as much as it scared him

June 1, 2017 18 Comments

On Sunday morning, someone took aim at the offices of the Lexington Herald-Leader, a major newspaper in Kentucky, and apparently shot the place up. Several windows were shattered and what appear to be bullet holes were found in other spots on the building, including in some windows on the press room. This was accompanied by a bomb threat at a newspaper processing plant down the road owned by another newspaper. It may have been a random act of violent vandalism, but I’m not so sure. A friend of mind works there. For obvious reasons I won’t name him. He’s shaken. He should be. He’s gotten threatening phone calls before — as a former small town journalist, I can say from experience that irrationally angry readers are…
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Politics

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