Before & After

Betty

"Along Comes Betty": Art Blakey drums, Lee Morgan trumpet, Benny Golson tenor sax, Bobby Timmons piano, Jymie Merritt bass. From '58.

His Honor

Between the time of production's end and the Hearst empire's failed coast-to-coast drive to prevent the release (and the continuing existence) of Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles formed The Free Company -- a leftist combine of artists and writers affirming, at a time of reactionary retrenchment and impending war, the basic beliefs in populist democracy. The idea was to illustrate by a series of radio plays the meaning of freedom and particularly those civil and economic rights which make freedom possible.

Welles's contribution, His Honor, the Mayor, was transmitted on April 6, 1941, the month before Kane's tentative premiere. Unlike his other radio work, here Welles's manner is homespun, mild in tone, and all the more telling for its absence of tub-thumping: Welles as narrator insists that "you can draw your own conclusions; I hope you do." He quietly and cunningly builds the dramatic tension by maintaining the evenness of mood. No sooner had the play been broadcast than it was immediately and vehemently denounced in the Hearst press as communist propaganda. The American Legion held meetings to denounce it.

The attacks backfired. This time Hearst and his men had gone too far, succeeding only in arousing public support for Welles and the release of Citizen Kane by methods of vilification transparent even to Hearst's natural supporters, giving backbone to RKO Studio's previously timid board of directors. There would now be four Kane premieres: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The advertising campaign was immediately mounted, exceeding in extravagance any movie launch that had gone before.

Just the Facts

Afghanistan

Announcement

Willie and the Mick

The very first Home Run Derby, from December of '59.

RN

47 years since he fled the White House, just ahead of the Sheriff, with his pockets full of silverware.

Oliver Stone, Senator George McGovern, and historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. on the man who, in Hunter S. Thompson's words, "broke the heart of the American Dream."

What the Summer of '63 Was Really Like

Thank you, Del Tenney -- Master of the Zoom!

Happy 60th, Pigfucker

Posted 10 years ago on the Wall Street pimp's 50th. Wouldn't change a word.

In January 2011, the country is now further to the right than at any time in its history, with a more debased political culture than ever before. More corporatized, with a completely hijacked State. There is more police power, private and public. Less personal and family privacy. Less freedom of movement -- physically, artistically, politically, and especially in terms of work. The connection between what people vote for and what they get is now absolutely delinked. Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" -- a complex he allowed to be created by turning over national security policy to the Dulles brothers and a complex that would murder his successor -- is now a military-corporate-intelligence state in control of everything. Bush's wars have metastasized -- while staying exactly the same in effect in Iraq -- into a massive expansion in Afghanistan, a massive expansion covertly in Iran, Indonesia, and Columbia (with the heroic populist governments of Central and South America now in Robert Gates's [Leon Panetta's] drone-sights), and new wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Not one perp from the Bush/Cheney crime gang has been gone after. Obama has claimed the right to murder anyone, at anytime, for any reason, anywhere on the planet. There is less control than ever over the gangster state of Israel. The people of Palestine and Gaza are forgotten. As are the poor, desperate, and homeless here in America. NAFTA and GATT have been expanded and hardened rather than reversed. Cap-and-trade was allowed to be hijacked by Goldman Sachs et al. - then killed. The BP/Gulf horror was not used to shift the country away from energy over-development toward conservation. Obama's Justice Department has Godfathered the public crucifixion of whistle blowers and true public servants such as Julian Assange (while setting Assange up for eventual extradition and Gitmo-ing), while also rewriting rules for use of Miranda warnings. There have been FBI raids on the homes and offices of anti-war activists. The criminal enterprise known as the Pharmaceutical/ Insurance/Healthcare "industry" is now more powerful, corrupt, incompetent, and privatized than ever before. The last great industrial union -- Walter Reuther's UAW -- was destroyed by Obama and his henchmen by means which would've made Ronald Reagan blush. Most state and local governments are bankrupt, and abandoned. All public service unions are now on the run in America's new form of McCarthyism. Obama has set us up for the coup de grâce: the Neo-Feudal dismantling of all public and egalitarian struggles and accomplishments of the past 150 years. Checkmate.

But who'd a-thunk in the following six months, he would:

Support Mubarak.

Murder thousands of Pakistani and Afghan civilians by the perfect Obamian murder weapon -- a computer-controlled drone strike.

Launch aggressive war against Somalia.

Launch aggressive war against Libya.

Embrace the mob-family dictatorship in Bahrain.

Push for the largest defense increase in world history, while bleating about "austerity" and "shared sacrifice": restrained -- by House Republicans.

Appoint Reichsmarschall David von Petraeus as CIA Director, eliminating the fail-safe wall between civilian intelligence and military action.

Let Bibi Netanyahu publicly cornhole him on the White House lawn. (And when Bibi was done, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon took over.)

Nationally celebrate the murder of an unarmed old man by dozens of PCP addicts, in the presence of his wife and children.

Nationally celebrate the murder of Moamar Gadafy's son and three grandchildren, in one of hundreds of assassination attempts against Gadafy himself. (Who as of January 2011 was still on the US Good Guy list.)

Stick a shiv in Elizabeth Warren's back ~ instead appointing a male dishrag. (The shiv to Warren being in the classic tradition: Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity Baptist Church, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, David Patterson, ACORN, Van Jones, Charles Bolden, Shirley Sherrod, etc.)

Prevent Holder and the Justice Department from pursuing Murdoch and the NewsCorp scandal.

And wind-up LEADING the corporate totalitarian destruction of what was left of public policy, public social concern, public investigations, public education, magnanimity, forbearance, gentleness, mercy, protection of the weak; and pushing the Republican Party further than it ever hoped to go -- instead of fighting it.

Swept in on a wave of populist energy and hope, this designer Judas has led the most vicious assault on the poor and powerless in US history -- a Judas who clearly views any kind of politics save the politics of corrupt privilege as sentimental rot. So here's hoping you and your Mutant Elite supporters choke on the black truffle sandwiches and butterfly pasta with squid at one of your many birthday celebrations tonight, you slick and slimy cocksucker.