What the duck?
Do you know who wins with the suspension of Phil Robertson from A&E’s “Duck Dynasty”? Ducks.
Ducks are great. They’re colorful. They walk on land with two legs, they swim, and they fly. That’s insane. They’re friendlier with humans than they have any obligation to be. It's fun to feed them stale bread at a local park. Ducks, you have a friend in me.
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Doesn’t Pope Francis realize that church doctrine needs to be vetted by the Republican National Committee?
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It turns out that Pope Francis took the inspiration of his papacy name from a previous “Pope Francis.” I had assumed he named himself after Sinatra.
Rock 'n Soul giants
Hall & Oates have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and not a moment too soon. In fact, the rock and pop duo is probably too good for enshrinement. The Hall itself (the museum in Cleveland, that is, not Daryl) is an uptight, bourgeois institution that’s utter existence contradicts what rock and roll music claims to be. (What’s up with having a black tie event and concert only for VIPs as the annual Hall induction ceremony? Even stuffy Major League Baseball knows that you have to open up an induction party to as many fans as the open air allows.) But then this is a jazz man talking. What I know for sure is that the true history of rock and roll music is basically, as many others have already assessed, a tale of white appropriation of African-American blues music, “gutbucket” rhythm and blues packaged for kiddie consumption in suburban pockets of white privilege.
It’s not-at-all-surprising that Hall and Oates would be considered uncool by so many children of the 1990s when it was this decade that witnessed the culmination of the process that punk began, the total and final severing of industry-categorized “rock and roll” music from its original African-American audience. Today, if you are at a “rock” concert, you are no doubt surrounded by white faces, including the ones on stage, whereas mixed-race
audiences will be found enjoying live performances by mixed-race
artists in the genres of pop, R&B, hip-hop, dance, and yes, still even jazz. The grunge melodies first given to us by H&O’s fellow 2014 inductees, Nirvana, may have brought rock a new sound in the last decade of the century, but their music was always for the ofays only. It grew from the branch of the rock tree that was always less Clarksdale than London, and less dancing than standing and frowning.
The punk and grunge crowds were bound to rebel against a neo-soul duo that rolled off the same phunky streets of Philly that had given the world Eddie Kendricks, the O'Jays, the Delfonics, Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Harold Melvin, Billy Paul, and the Spinners. It would not be coincidental when Daryl and John’s un-tortured band, with its effortless and confident grooves, fell out of favor at exactly the same time they took their act to the Apollo Theater and teamed with their heroes, the Temptations.
Daryl and John typically get thrown in with other 1980s chart-topping white bands, which happen to be mostly acts of artless tune-age like Journey and REO Speedwagon. But the Tom Joyner Morning Show on radio still belts out H&O throw-backs like “I Can’t Go For That” and “One on One” for eager urban audiences, and Tom isn’t playing them between other “oldies” by H&O’s contemporaries, he’s spinning ‘em between brand new hits by Anthony Hamilton and Jill Scott.
Hall & Oates were fearsome forerunners of the popular tunes that followed in the wake of their most listened to albums. A newly-racially-conscious Les Nessman once said, “Scratch an Allman Brother, and you have Chuck Berry.” And if you scratch your “Billie Jean” recording, you hear “I Can’t Go For That.”
Hall & Oates were immensely successful in their day, and they are, today, the best-selling musical duo of all time. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has a little more credibility for their presence. Now, next correction, Chicago...
Combating American violence
Nelson Mandela’s life will continue to resonate and inspire for years to come. How annoying it must have been to the power brokers inside our government that Madiba grew to be so popular throughout the world despite their best and bitterest efforts. It was the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States that, for purposes of arrest, tipped the location of the “terrorist” Mandela to the apartheid government of South Africa in 1962. Within hours, he would be locked away to begin 27 years behind bars and a CIA operative named Paul Eckel would be calling the arrest “one of our greatest coups” in the official report to his supervisors.
1962 was the same year that CIA agents were attempting on the life of another dark-skinned Marxist leader rising to global prominence, this one in Cuba, and they were also continuing to fuel one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, one involving South Africa’s neighbor, Angola.
The CIA successfully ousted democratically-elected presidents and prime ministers in Guatemala, Iran, and Brazil during the 1950s and 60s, succeeded a decade after the arrest of Mandela in their efforts to murder Chile’s democratically-elected president Salvadore Allende, and would still be attempting to assassinate democratically-elected heads of state (Hugo Chavez of Venezuela) almost a half-century later. (These are just a few of the more-celebrated examples of CIA “pro-democracy” action over the years.) The great capitalist kleptomaniacs of the West have never been able to accept the fact that the steely peoples of the developing world will, without fail, choose to govern themselves, even when confronted with the barrel of a gun.
American arrogance in respect to nation-building is entirely unjustified when we consider that the nation itself was founded upon the genocide of an aboriginal population, then failed to write human slavery out of its legal code for the first 87 years of its existence. As far back as its founding documents, the government of the United States has tried to subvert democratic self-governance by dark-skinned peoples, abroad and at home. During the first decade of the 19th Century, President Thomas Jefferson, the “father” of the U.S. Constitution, spoke out against the successful slave revolt recently executed in Haiti that he believed threatened the institution of slavery everywhere. The forced bondage of chained Afrikans served as the foundation of the young nation’s entire economic system, and provided for Jefferson, personally, an aristocrat's prerogative to rape his own human chattel at his estate in Virginia.
We still hear the argument made that it was Mandela’s responsibility to “renounce violence” in order to shed the formal designation of “terrorist.” To that, I direct you to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., another revolutionary that, like Mandela, has been stripped of his radicalism by death and defective memory. King said shortly before his assassination, “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”
The right to assert self-defense against the most powerful and most violent government on the planet must not be denied to anybody, even if he or she possesses dark skin. As white Americans, we do like our black folk non-violent. It makes us feel safer in our person, our property, and our self-image. But our sin has been plentiful and destructive. It is original. It is fundamental. And sometimes, courageous heroes like Mandela demonstrate by their actions, not only their words, that they have the content of character to refuse to renounce violence until the violence has stopped against them, to stand up to those authoritarians that boast of owning democratic principles but trade instead in humiliation, trauma, and terror. These are the men and women that will save us.
Obamacare is shit
I. Told. You. So.
Signed,
Ralph Nader
Cynthia McKinney
Jill Stein
The National Green Party
Chris Moeller
An N.S.A. Christmas
The New Yorker and Ryan Lizza have
an excellent investigative piece about the recent history of N.S.A. and metadata and Internet collection. Barack Obama and Joe Biden both opposed the overreaching surveillance programs before they expanded them as President and Vice President.
Obama already switched sides in 2006, after a provision had been added to the law that allowed phone companies to challenge a government request for their records. N.S.A. lawyers had argued (in secret) before the FISA court that Section 215 of the Patriot Act allowed them to legally collect the phone records of Americans. (They were retroactively legalizing recent N.S.A. activity.) Both Senator Obama and Senator Biden voted to renew the Patriot Act with expanded authority. The new law allowed the N.S.A. to put a “pen register” on every phone. Anytime a citizen of the United States has made a phone call since, it has been logged in an N.S.A. database.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s doggedness in investigating N.S.A. has helped make up for what was a terrible initial vote in favor of the Patriot Act. During the presidential election cycle of 2008, he engaged in some wishful thinking, as most Democrats did, when Obama promised a comprehensive review, upon election, of N.S.A. surveillance programs. In office, Obama would discover that the N.S.A. was exceeding even the allowances set forth by the classified and rubber-stamping FISA court, and lying to the court about its actions besides. Only two thousand of the eighteen thousand phone numbers the agency was searching had court approval, and now we know, thanks to the leaks of heroic whistleblowers, that many of those numbers were not linked to international terrorism investigations either, but directly to American citizens and domestic political critics of Washington and the corporate state-- to their phone, Internet, and public library records. What legal limits existed were brushed aside. Obama would not put an end to Bush’s extrajudicial surveillance program when given the chance, instead he codified it. As it has been with two wars, drone strikes, torture policy, and a U.S. concentration camp for Muslims in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, President Obama’s record on surveillance has not been one of reform, but of ordaining crimes of the state.
Here is wicked smart
Will Hunting in 1997, offering his take on the N.S.A.
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A People's History of the Moeller TV Festival (#12)
This has become an annual staple: a publishing of the many of the anonymous comments, without context, from the TV Festival comment box. Know that you are all loved. Enjoy...
(all comments sic'd, and others I can't read the handwriting)
Thanks to Jamie for coming all the way from Chicago for TV Fest XII.
I won a gift card from work that paid for this season of Gilligan's Island.
They wear a lot of makeup.
I never noticed how often the skipper looked directly into the TV camera, as if to say Do you believe this idiot Gilligan!
Forget Ginger vs. Marianne. How about Mrs. Howell?!
How did they ever find this theme song for the show? It's like it was written for it.
Mrs. Howell's eyebrows are interesting
Rob once dressed as Gilligan for Halloween. Does anybody have a photo?
It was so sad when Bob Denver died in that plane crash.
Mr. Howell dusted the bush for Mrs. Howell... that sure was nice... like Aaron pumping gas for Alex when its cold
We should create a TV Fest song with the track from this show
to answer that timeless question Ginger or Maryann - Ginger
Damn, that Mr. Howell sounds like Mr. McGoo!
And the Emmy for Best Comedy Series goes to Gilligan's Island!
louis C.K. has the best bit about cell phones!
This is why nobody remembers shows like Seinfeld or Friends or ER
Ricky Gervais laughter is all I need to hear to laugh
That's what my hand looked like after my wine bottle steak knife fiasco.
One time I pulled a muscle in my neck rolling my eyes behind my husband's back... just kidding
That fight is what would happen between Gilligan and the Skipper if the professor didn't step in.
It's all downhill from here for guys who've hosted TV Festivals for 12 years. We sit around waiting to see who's gonna die first.
I don't know, the only thing missing was Louie hoarding Feathers. Otherwise I thought it was pretty much the same as Gilligan's Island.
The episode of SNL that Louie CK hosted wasn't very funny... which was disappointing
The results of my pregnancy test took like a whole 5 Days!
Todd Barry is my buddy
Weird things are happening to my body while growing this baby. Glad my Dr doesn't make comments about my growing uterus.
What is Zach Braff up to?
No episode of a show that starts with Toto's Africa could be bad.
Studies have shown that Zac Braff has feminine lips, enhancing his attractiveness and/or uniqueness
Schwimmer's Ear
That was some sort of "Gone with the Wind"-themed episode.
Sorry I forgot to write who requested the Open Remotes in the program.
A first generation Ipod? This show is so dated.
Garret Donovan & Neil Goldman, who wrote this episode, were writers on Community. The Community characters Garret and Fat Neil were named for them.
Alex, did you remember to put your phone on 'vibrate'?
"Salesman" seems vaguely reminiscent of "Taxman" by the Beatles
This episode was nominated for an emmy. Probably for the controversy over saying "Hell"!
Rob, you don't have to hold my comments. You can pass them to Jamie.
I can see why people always refer to the Beatles as "like the Monkees but without the acting chops"
This show as a lot of fun but years later we know that this generation of young people ruined the traditional values of the United States.
I think Peter is the cutest
I think Davy is the cutest
The 60s would have been a good time to be employed as a laugh track actor.
Was that Paul Reuben's father as the pawn shop owner?
Trippy
@ my elementary schools after school program we had a dance to go with the theme song. As well as the "hard knock life" from Annie
Archer is intentionally drawn to look like Don Draper on Mad Men
Aisha Tyler is a friggen genius. She was on Celebrity Jeopardy and cleaned house.
This show is funnier when I'm not trying to sleep
Has Jessica Walter ever acted a scene without a drink in her hand?
This show is "comically anachronistic"
Some other H. Jon Benjamin characters are Carl, the convenience store owner on Family Guy and Coach McGurt from Home Movies
Chris Parnell would play Jamie in the TV Festival movie
Chuck Norris has really let himself go
As soon as I find a better source than YouTube for his 1985 Showtime special "F-D-R: A One-Man Show," there will be an all-Chris Elliott TV Festival.
Aaron had a customer that we found out was a swinger from a customer of mine that he propositioned.
There is one person who never got the credit they deserved to making Cheers such a success... we honor Ted Dansen's hair stylist
Rebecca seems really annoyed by Sam. It seems like a good auditing session would take care of those thetons
Rebecca is wearing a red leather top from the Eddie Murphy Raw collection
This must be a later episode since Dick didn't trip over the footstool in the opening credits.
I was not aware peanut butter and avocado went together
Does Chris have any wakey flakies for breakfast?
That eavesdropping misunderstanding ruined what would have been a great swingers party
I googled peanut butter avocado dip & it doesn't seem to exist, but this episode was referenced in many posts. If I find a good one it will be at the next festival
Dick Van Dyke was drawn to look like Don Draper on Mad Men
Does anybody want my recipe for bell pepper relish?
That Jerry Van Dyke is a genius.
if you haven't seen Robot Chicken's Star Wars, I highly suggest watching it.
RIP Brian "the dog"
That's all we need. a Druish princess. Oh wait, wrong movie. My bad.
The Monkees could really have used some of the moves from the Stormtroopers Dance.
how come no one thought to "Jam the radar" oh wait, wrong movie
Did everyone see the photo of Danyelle dressed as Meg at last year's festival?
the jump to hyper space brought out the Dr. Who time warp. By the way Dr Who celebrated their 50 anniversary last weekend
The show Ray Romano got fired from after one day was Newsradio
And Dave gave us Chris Elliott
Why are Dave's suit jackets always too big?
In the movie of the TV Festival Jamie would play Les Nessman
Mrs. Carlson is wearing a wrist watch.
There was some beautiful, flowy, Aqua Netty hair at WKRP
Let's assume Andy's bottle is sparkling grape juice.
Yeah congratulate the lady with her baby by giving her alcohol! People think before you gift
Don't you love hearing that REAL WKRP music?
Treme DOES get good if you stick with it.
I hear Ben Affleck is the next dumb gay Batman.
There's a Liz Lemon version of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream
Were any of those people on the tour the original Willy Wonka kids? Anyone know?
Shelia is played by Alexandra Wentworth. Who is married to George Stephanopoulos. Making George her real-life Schmoopy.
Alex would get the crab bisque
Ana Gasteyer, an SNL alum, was the customer before Elaine at the end.
Jason Alexander played a super, creepy sociopath in Criminal Minds.
This is a funny episode, Schmoopy
Ghosts of apartheid
As you watch and read tributes to Nelson Mandela tonight in the American news media, keep these facts in mind. The anti-apartheid leader, who was released from South African prison after 27 years in 1990, was formally considered a terrorist by the United States government throughout the 1970s and '80s, along with his political party, the African National Congress. Ronald Reagan called him a terrorist. So did Margaret Thatcher. It was actually the CIA that arrested him in 1962, then turning him over to South African authorities. Mandela was on the U.S. Terrorist Watch List until 2008.
It is still the case that when ANC members apply for visas in the U.S., they are flagged for questioning and need a waiver to be allowed into the country. In 2007, Barbara Masekela, South Africa's ambassador to the U.S. from '02 to '06, was denied a visa to visit her ailing cousin and didn't get a waiver until after the cousin had died.
The United States continues to support the apartheid government of Israel. Palestinians are herded into ghetto-ized communities, or "urban townships," evoking ghosts of South Africa. They are segregated in housing, residency, water policy, urban planning, education, and taxation. Israel has seized increasingly-larger sections of the Gaza Strip, and still subject that area to a naval blockade. Bans on family unification in certain areas, along with the revoking of residential rights and forced exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, is designed to tamper the growth of the Palestinian population that might otherwise threaten the Jewish majority in the state. A Jewish national (as defined by Israeli law) living in Memphis, Tennessee, who has never visited Israel, has more rights of citizenship and enjoys more state protections in Israel than a Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent living in Bethlehem whose family lineage in that city dates back centuries.
Why do Americans always view the crimes and moral failures of their racist imperial government to be ghosts of the past?
Moeller TV Fest 12
It's here. The 12th annual Moeller Television Festival will be held Saturday at my home in Des Moines. Please drop me a note, or one to my brother Aaron, if it's always been your dream to attend. The weather outside will be cold, but the programming inside will be hot, hot, hot. Here's the festival screening schedule, maybe the best ever. Most of the programs are available for viewing online, but why spoil your fun. Make a day of it.
"Smile, You're on Mars Camera" Gilligan's Island #42 10/7/65
"Dr. Ben/Nick" Louie #3 7/6/10
"My Way Home" Scrubs #100 1/24/06 (Open Remote submission)
"The Devil and Peter Tork" The Monkees #52 2/5/68 (Open Remote submission)
"Skytanic" Archer #7 2/18/10
"Chris, Susie, Brett, and Malice" Eagleheart #7 3/17/11
"Home is the Sailor" Cheers #123 9/24/87
"All About Eavesdropping" The Dick Van Dyke Show" #64 10/23/63
"Blue Harvest" Family Guy #99 9/23/07
"The 35th Annual Kennedy Center Honors: David Letterman" 12/26/12
"The Patter of Little Feet" WKRP in Cincinnati #30 11/26/79
"A Goon's Deed in a Weary World" 30 Rock #136 1/24/13
"The Soup Nazi" Seinfeld #116 11/2/95
Why there needs to be One Big Union?
As the International Workers of the World (“the Wobblies”) contend, all workers need to be joined together in the struggle. The price of splintering the groups by trade for purposes of collective bargaining has been the health care disaster we see in the United States today. Take Canada, as a contrast. Two generations ago, union leaders in that country were advocating for health care coverage for all Canadians. They got it. In the U.S., unions advocated health care only for themselves. They got it, but nobody else did, and now, because health care in the U.S., where it exists, has only been provided by the business sector, and business is actively seeking to escape this responsibility, we’re all in the ditch.
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Cracker Barrel restaurants depress me. The food’s good enough. (I’m easy to please in that regard.) I’m not even really referring-- specifically-- to the purposefully-antiquated motif of the chain or to the time I saw a magazine advertisement framed on the wall next to my table featuring a man in black face. I’m generally referring to the fact that Cracker Barrel is, to me, a sad reminder of the human displacement of rural America and the downward mobility of country dwellers. It pretends to honor that fast-disappearing and valuable culture, but of course, as a nation-wide corporate restaurant chain, with their outlets almost always located in the exurbs, it has done less than nothing to rescue rural America.
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Any time you hear a politician use the term “middle class,” that person is denying the existence of a class war. There are only two classes: the top and the bottom. The correct term for those doing the struggling at the bottom of our exploitative economic system (the most of us) is “working class.”
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The filibuster option may have been struck a blow, but fear not, Republicans, you've still got gerrymandering and voter intimidation.
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The head of Des Moines Water Works has (rather graciously) invited public debate on the city's plan to continue adding fluoride to the city's public water supply. The Center for Disease Control has found that for every one dollar ever spent on fluoridation by U.S. municipalities, thirty-eight have been saved in private spending on dental care. If those old Birchers out there, and the new Tea Partiers, don't want the government involved in the water business, they're always free to drink out of the rivers.
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Elf on the Shelf: Preparing your child for life in the Surveillance State.
