Eric Burdon's 1968 Rock Gospel Against Empire

During Donald Trump's ascent to the White House, his presence on television was as in-your-face and irritating as lake flies in spring (only people who live around Lake Winnebago, WI will have any idea what that means.). When I watched Trump on TV back then, what immediately came to mind were lines from "No Self Pity," one of my all time favorite songs by Eric Burdon and the Animals: 

And no matter how low you are
There is always somebody lower . . . 
And no matter how dumb you are
There is always somebody dumber . . .

That song is from the 1968 album "The Twain Shall Meet," a recording much overlooked for two major reasons. First, the album competed for attention with releases by the Beatles ("The White Album"), Jimi Hendrix ("Electric Ladyland"), The Rolling Stones ("Beggars Banquet"), Cream ("Wheels of Fire"), and others whose songs that year became staples on FM album oriented rock radio stations for many decades. 

Second and less obvious is that "The Twain Shall Meet" is one of many 1967 - 1970 recordings that over the years became marginalized as primarily "psychedelic," hippie-era opuses. In other words, for the corporate guardians who decide what we get to hear on radio--and who decide how rock and roll will be defined in "official" writing about the genre--an album like "The Twain Shall Meet" represents not much more than "Eric Burdon's drug phase" or a period piece that allows baby boomers to look back with gleeful nostalgia at the glory days of acid dreams and sexual freedom. 

Make no mistake: the LSD inspired, hippie movement fingerprints on "The Twain Shall Meet" are as obvious as the graffiti on New York City subway trains. You have to be willfully obtuse to miss it. But to state that fact does NOT mean that the values expressed on the record are naive, irrational, or not worth considering as an important early stride in the CONTINUING and VITAL effort to expose and transform the consumerist, military-industrial-complex culture excesses that have left too many spiritually empty and all too eager to sacrifice meaningful human engagement for the thrill of a digital technology induced dopamine rush. To challenge those excesses does not mean that you are or have to be a hippie. Likewise, for the challenge to those excesses to come from a 1960s era rock album ought not make the challenge any easier to ignore. More from "No Self Pity": 

Modern day structures are fantastic 
But have you seen a butterfly's wings? 
Man has created symphony 
But have you heard a blackbird sing? 
Man can make sweet red wine 
But have you tasted a mountain stream?
Hollywood has created movies 
But listen to the color of your dreams 

With record numbers of people addicted to their smart phones, why on earth would we want to keep those lyrics stuck in 1968? There's a temptation to say, "oh, those words were just the LSD talking," with the implication being that you somehow have to be stoned in order to have any kind of appreciation for sensory awareness, nature, and being present in the moment. Somehow to be "sober" means to suspend any hope that love, tolerance, peace, understanding, and other "hippie" values can have any real force in our lives. If being sober means having to reject real love, then it's no wonder so many would rather be stoned. 

The Twain Shall Meet: A Rock Gospel Against Empire

Eric Burdon and the Animals' "The Twain Shall Meet" really is not a great album in the way "great" albums are typically understood. It does not include an abundance of "catchy" songs, the production quality is sloppy in places, the playing of the instruments does not inspire awe (with the exception of Danny McCulloch's bass playing, which is outstanding throughout), the lyrics are sometimes more obscure than necessary, and it does not show up on lots of "best of" lists. The album did break into the Billboard top 100 for a few weeks in 1968, but that was largely on the strength of the songs "Monterey" (a timely celebration of the 1967 festival that introduced the world to Jimi Hendrix and other legends of the era) and "Sky Pilot" (a protest song that was appreciated by the growing anti-war movement of the time.).

To be frank, I didn't make much of this album myself when I first became aware of it around 1976 or so (I was too young to fully appreciate rock music in 1968). By 1976 the late 1960s era artists were fading, and a range of new genres were gaining currency (soul, punk, disco, new wave, early hip hop, etc.). More troubling, by 1976 FM radio was abandoning its original mission to serve as a space for the expression of counterculture values through music and discussion, so like millions of youth I really had no one to educate me about the meaning(s) of rock and roll. It wasn't until years later, when I discovered that the album title "The Twain Shall Meet" was a pun off of Rudyard Kipling's line "Never the Twain Shall Meet," that I took renewed interest in the record. 

Depending on who you talk to, Rudyard Kipling the poet and novelist (1865 - 1936) was either an overt racist apologist for European/American imperialism or, as the late Christopher Hitchens argued, a man of "permanent contradictions" whose work paradoxically supported colonialism at the same time presenting an "exaltation of the common man." 

Is Eric Burdon and the Animals' "The Twain Shall Meet" a response to Kipling? Listen to the album and judge for yourself.

Regardless of who is the "real" Kipling, there is no doubt that he was the unofficial poet of the British Empire whose works were widely seen as a celebration of the Western attempt to "civilize" the East. Eric Burdon appears to have been taken with Kipling's poem "The Ballad of East and West" (1889), which includes the line "Oh East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." (This would not be the only time Burdon would pun off of Kipling. With his band War in 1970 he released "The Black Man's Burdon," a twist on Kipling's jingoistic and pro-imperialist "White Man's Burden" [1899]). 

My reading of "The Twain Shall Meet" is that, in the anti-establishment style of peace-loving hippies, it is a challenge to all the vestiges of empire: white supremacy, hyper nationalism, mindless patriotism, war, and the destruction of nature. It is significant that Eric Burdon himself hails from Newcastle upon Tyne, the northeast England working class industrial center that survived German air raids in World War II. Newcastle's "Geordies," like the working poor in the United States and indeed all over the globe, were/are ultimately the main domestic victims of the greed of the empire builders. Yet instead of giving us a kind of Bruce Springsteen/John Mellencamp "celebration" of the working class--a celebration that situates working class consciousness as a fixed and permanent part of the human condition--Burdon's "The Twain Shall Meet" seeks to transcend all class consciousness. If Kipling was a poet for empire builders, Burdon circa 1968 was a poet for the empire wreckers. The best way to wreck the empire, the album says to me, is to emancipate your mind from its allegiance to empire values. (In that sense the album is very Bob Marley-esque).

"The Twain Shall Meet" could have been called "The Gospel of Eric Burdon and the Animals." The opening track, "Monterey," starts off with Burdon whispering "In the Beginning" as if we are about to be introduced to a new creation myth. And in a sense we ARE introduced to a new creation myth: "Monterey" celebrates the famous "summer of love" music festival as a multicultural mix of peace-loving youth creating such an overwhelming space for love that "even the cops grooved with us." Monterey in a real sense gave birth to the counterculture. 

On the orignal vinyl album all the songs ran into each other, which enhanced the sense that all the tunes were part of one bigger story. Bassist Danny McCulloch penned and sang two songs on side one ("Just the Thought" and "Orange and Red Beams"). Both have a kind of acid trip vibe to them, though "Just the Thought" comes off like a warning to all who would strive for the empire's definition of success: 

As I play I see me winning
And I gain what's called self-pride
And I turn around with a smiling sigh
See a flower that has died
I feel a change, another change
Another game, I will have learnt

If there is a masterpiece on "The Twain Shall Meet," it would have to be "Sky Pilot," the epic anti-war tune. A "sky pilot" is a military chaplain. In the song the sky pilot is a "good holy man" who glibly sends young soldiers off to war. Burdon's sky pilot is the Rudyard Kipling figure whose job it is to indoctrinate the servants of empire: 

The fate of your country is in your young hands
May God give you strength
Do your job real well
If it all was worth it
Only time it will tell

For me, Burdon's "Sky Pilot" was a stand-in for Kipling, and the song a not-so-subtle "Fuck You" to all those who enable war. Since 2001 in the United States we've had ample numbers of sky pilots gleefully sending men and women off to ill-defined battles. No surprise "Sky Pilot" has pretty much disappeared from FM radio over the last decade. 

The last song on "The Twain Shall Meet" is "All is One." Bruce Eder in an AllMusic review says the song "is probably unique in the history of pop music as a psychedelic piece, mixing bagpipes, sitar, oboes, horns, flutes, and a fairly idiotic lyric, all within the framework of a piece that picks up its tempo like the dance music from Zorba the Greek while mimicking the Spencer Davis Group's 'Gimme Some Lovin.'" 

I'm not sure why "We are one/your neighbor is your brother" would be deemed idiotic. In fact the widespread outrage to the Trump Administration's cruel and family unfriendly immigration crackdown is in a sense deeply rooted in the humane premise that we ARE all one regardless of borders. But Eder is certainly correct that the piece is unique even by the high creative standards of sixties progressive rock. 

Eric Burdon's entire career in music has been about lifting people up, which is why I reject attempts to marginalize "The Twain Shall Meet" as merely being part of a hippy "phase." As Burdon himself says on his website: 

The music I love was created by the sons and daughters of slaves. My life's work has always been about honoring those people who suffered and thus, created a language of peace and salvation through music. Everything we believed in during the 60s, everything people fought and died for, is being jeopardized today.

Eric Burdon's rock gospel against empire is as vital today as it was in 1968. Probably even more vital given the overt and disturbing trends toward fascism across the globe. 

Pompeo and Circumstance

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed repeatedly that Iraq was one of the biggest disasters in American history, and that he would declare victory in Afghanistan and send the troops home. I've written previously about how Trump benefited from the "war fatigue" developed since 2001. 

By the summer of 2017 Trump's behavior as Commander in Chief erased any hope that he might actually make good on what sounded like promises to minimize America's war posture, and instead he actually escalated militarism as the nation's foreign policy of choice. Unfortunately Washington Democrats continue to talk "resistance" to Trump while continuing to aid and abet him when it comes to military spending. 

But it gets worse: now that Trump has decided to surround himself with the hawkish Mike Pompeo and John Bolton as chief national security advisers, and has Gina Haspel now leading the CIA, he's guaranteed that the "neoconservative" policies that gave us Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to prevail. 

Neoconservativism in American foreign policy after 9/11 became a toxic mix of ultra-nationalism and the assertion of the right to launch preemptive military strikes in any place at any time. The true neo-con views any anger and/or aggression aimed at the United States not as the "unintended consequences of the US government's international activities" (what the CIA calls "Blowback"), but as irrational hatred of our freedoms. In the neo-con fantasy, the world is essentially a clash between the forces of civilization and barbarism, with the US always the archetypal symbol of the former. 

From 2001 - 2008 George W. Bush was the front man for neoconservatives, repeatedly renouncing any attempts to see the events of September 11, 2001 and anti-American terror in general as responses to America's global behavior. We're now in a bizarre situation where Bush himself is having second thoughts about "why they hate us" at the same time Trump (probably due to a mixture of incompetence and ignorance) is doubling down on neo-con principles. 

Context: Bush talks to Bono

If you can believe it, former President George W. Bush now hosts an annual "Forum on Leadership." According to the Bush Presidential Center, the Forum is designed to "develop, recognize, and celebrate leadership by bringing together leading voices for in-depth discussions on today's pressing issues." My initial reaction was that Harvey Weinstein should be hosting a Forum on Feminism if a Forum on Leadership can be hosted by a man whose "leadership" produced two failed wars, an ill-defined "War on Terror" featuring tortured interpretations of the Constitution that justified literal torture, tax policies that exploded the deficit and increased inequality, the Hurricane Katrina botched rescue and recovery mission, taxpayer bailouts of big banks and other "too big to fail" institutions, and the worst economic collapse since the 1930s. That record is not exactly an argument for ending presidential term limits. 

Every year the Forum on Leadership will feature the presentation of the "George W. Bush Medal For Distinguished Leadership" to an individual who "has inspired others to action, and who has demonstrated a sustained commitment to improving the lives of others." The first recipient was none other than Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2, who was recognized for his anti-poverty and anti-AIDS work. United Kingdom writers George Monbiot and Harry Browne have written blistering critiques of Bono's brand of activism, claiming that the practical consequences of the Irish crooner's  cozying up to power are (1) the silencing of  the very people he is trying to help, (2) aiding the attempts of the rich and powerful to brand themselves as grand humanitarians, and (3) shielding the power brokers from having to take responsibility for their own policies that create the very problems they purport to be trying to solve. 

Bush and Bono: Distinguished Leaders?

After presenting Bono with the Medal, Bush sat down for a televised (on C-Span) conversation with him,  moderated by the president's former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. I watched it so you don't have to. Before a by-invitation-only crowd at the Bush Center, Mr. Bush and Mr. Bono talked about how they became friends and how they worked together to provide relief to Africans. Bono told the audience that thanks to Mr. Bush, American taxpayers are AIDS activists. The two almost seemed to envision themselves as Winston Churchill and Albert Schweitzer reflecting on their heroic efforts to save Western values and rescue the African continent from the scourge of poverty and disease. But the level of delusion made it look and sound more like Nixon and Elvis in the oval office. 

Bush and Bono 1.0: Nixon and Elvis

The conversation did include one statement by President Bush that made me experience shock, anger, and hope at the same time. The statement was: 

"I was worried about the security of the country after 9/11. We spent a lot of time worrying about that. A lot. And one of the things you have to do is address why is it that people would come and kill our citizens. And it's one thing to respond, and we did. Forcefully. But the other thing is to think about the long term causes. And I was telling this to Bono earlier--that the AIDS issue is not only a moral issue for a great nation, it's a national security issue. So think about those orphans that were there and, what happens if  nobody shows up to help. You know the big, rich nations of the world said 'it's not our problem. Let them figure it out.' And then all of a sudden a group of people show up and said, 'we're your new family--we care for you'--that's before they instruct them on how put a suicide vest on. And so it's in our national security interest. SEE THE LESSON OF 911 IS: HOW OTHERS LIVE MATTERS TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. "

Why does that statement provoke shock, anger, and hope? 

SHOCK:  Mr. Bush and his administration spent years after 9/11 insisting that anti-American terrorism was the result of "them" hating "us" because of our freedoms. I've written previously about how Mr. Bush's framing of 9/11 ("Freedom and Fear are at War") made it almost impossible to imagine America's opponents as motivated by anything other than irrational hatred. So to hear him now, 17 years later, admit that the issue is not so simple is shocking. 

ANGER: Imagine if, in the weeks and months after 9/11, President Bush had said, "How others live matters to our national security." Suppose at the time he had had the political courage to state other obvious truisms: Our foreign policy globally and in the Middle East provokes widespread anger; the poor people of the world have as many reasons to be suspicious of us as they do to like us, etc. If the leader of the United States had the courage to state the obvious, we probably could have prevented the loss of thousands of lives and the dislocation of perhaps millions more. Not to mention the number of military families in this country that will forever be pained by the experience of having loved ones suffer as a result of vaguely defined combat missions. 

HOPE:  Who knows, if George Bush is now able to state the obvious, maybe it will start a trend among other elected officials. I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, but if someone who spent his entire presidency denying that "how others live" had anything to do with national security can change, maybe anything is possible. 

Pompeo and Circumstance

With candidate Trump seeming to run in opposition to the so-called neocon foreign policy that ruled the Bush administration, and with George Bush himself now evolving toward a more nuanced view of America's foes, this should have been a good time to rethink the dominant foreign policy choices of the last 17 years. Those choices, under Bush AND Obama, wrecked lives, cost trillions of dollars, expanded the power of the President to launch "preemptive" wars, made continuous drone bombings a centerpiece of US policy, declared war against whistle blowers, undermined whatever moral authority the United States once had in the world, turned local police forces into branches of the military, and reduced the United States Constitution from its status as the Supreme Law of the Land to a "nice idea." 

No one expected Donald Trump to be a peacenik. and I am fully aware that what he said on the campaign trail (like most of what he says today) was worth about as much as a degree from Trump University. Still, at some level he has to know that Mike Pompeo and John Bolton represent the exact opposite of what he ran on, and that their appointment to high level positions greatly increases the chances of another military quagmire in the Middle East or somewhere else in the world. 

During Mr. Pompeo's recent confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, Senator Rand Paul was the only legislator who engaged in any meaningful dialogue with him about the neoconservative principles still guiding American foreign policy. Senator Paul ultimately caved and did vote to confirm Pompeo, claiming that in a private conversation Pompeo told him he agreed that Iraq was a mistake. Sure. 

Anyone who's been to a college graduation has heard "Pomp and Circumstance." The phrase actually comes from Shakespeare's Othello, as part of a lament about leaving the battlefield. Othello says: 

O farewell,

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife;
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

Perhaps the Trump Administration will announce an intention to rename the tune "Pompeo and Circumstance," with the "shrill Trump" not saying "farewell" but "Hello" to the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. 

Frightening. 

An interview with Tom Breuer (AKA Aldous J. Pennyfarthing)

In 2002 Tom Breuer (pronounced BROY-er) was editor of the Fox Valley SCENE, an alternative, independent monthly newspaper published in northeast Wisconsin. In July of that year Tom called to ask if I would like to write a monthly column of media criticism. He even came up with the name "Media Rants." Media Rants appeared in the hard copy SCENE every month for approximately 14 years; in 2016 I moved it over to this blog. Suffice it to say that were it not for Tom Breuer, there would be no Media Rants. So blame HIM.

Originally from Manitowoc, in the early 1990s Tom attended UW Green Bay where he edited the student newspaper The Fourth Estate. He left Wisconsin in 2015 and now lives in the northwest. Back in his SCENE days, he wrote some great comic pieces for the paper, often with a progressive political bent. In 2006 he coauthored a satirical screed against Bill O'Reilly, earning the praise of anti-wingnut warriors like Al Franken and Keith Olbermann. He's coauthored two additional books: Fair and Balanced, My Ass: An Unbridled Look at the Bizarre Reality of Fox News and The Brotherhood of the Disappearing Pants: A Field Guide to Conservative Sex Scandals.

In the Trump era Tom contributes frequently at the liberal blog Daily Kos under the pseudonym Aldous J. Pennyfarthing. As Aldous, he has recently published a hilarious e-book entitled Dear F*ucking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump. You can get the book for $2.99--less than the cost of your favorite tall latte--through Amazon Kindle, iBooks, BarnesandNoble.com and other online retailers.

If you consider yourself a Trump hater or part of the so-called "resistance," you should really support fellow travelers like Tom/Aldous. There's so much in the book for you to agree with that you'll find yourself saying "F*ck Yes!" at least once during each obscenely rude letter. You Trump lovers out there should check out the book too; you won't like the critiques but you'll appreciate a writing style that is the literary equivalent of putting the middle finger in the face of people and things the writer doesn't like.

To give Media Rants readers a better sense of what Dear F*ucking Lunatic is all about, I asked Tom to respond to a few questions. He graciously agreed to do so. Below are my questions and his unedited responses.

Media Rants: In your e-book it’s clear that you’ve been outraged by the Trump Administration and Trump personally for a long time. But you say that it was this particular Trump quote from a New York Times interview that really provoked your first obscenely rude letter to him: “Yeah, China, China’s been . . . I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China, you know that.”

      What was it about that particular quote that set you off?

      Tom Breuer: I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but Trump lies a lot, and when he does it’s an assault on our intelligence and sense of fair play. Of all his lies, it’s the impossible-to-believe, self-aggrandizing ones that are the most puzzling. And when most of us are doing our best to adhere to a social contract that demands we speak the truth whenever possible, it’s infuriating to see the president of the United States, of all people, lying so brazenly. And it’s doubly infuriating when approximately 30 percent of the population believes him no matter what he says.

      

      So China is at least 2,239 years old if you go back to the beginning of the Qin dynasty, and much older by some accounts. And he thinks he’s the most warmly received visitor to China ever. More so than Marco Polo — or Justin Bieber even. This wasn’t a lie about Obamacare or his tax scam or anything particularly important — and we’ve known for a long time that he tells the truth about as often as Steve Bannon sheds his exoskeleton — but there was something about this one that seemed so over the top and absurd that it was almost as though he was openly taunting any American with a nanogram of decency. And the scary part is he probably believes it on some level. It’s like I said in the book — the statement was the geopolitical equivalent of “that stripper really likes me,” only 10,000 times crazier and less self aware.

 Media Rants: Back in 2006 you coauthored a book called Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O’Reilly. Did you hate O’Reilly then as much as you seem to hate Trump now? And to what extent do you think Trump is in some ways a result of the impact of Fox News over the years?

      Tom Breuer: Trump and O’Reilly are a lot alike. Their ego, their bluster, their abject dishonesty, their uncanny physical resemblance to Ed Gein’s basement furniture. But you might say O’Reilly was like John the Baptist to Trump’s Cheeto Messiah. For one thing, they both have a first century understanding of the world. Secondly, O’Reilly prepared the way for Trump, but he’s not worthy to hold his loofah. Trump is orders of magnitude crazier and more repugnant.

      Fox News laid the groundwork for this travesty, and for years its go-to bully was O’Reilly. As the original purveyors of fake news, Fox and its disinformation campaigns made a big difference everywhere in the U.S. in 2016, but they may very well have put Trump over the top in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And the network continues to enable Trump’s every worst impulse.

Media Rants: You call Trump a variety of names in the book, including: “America’s last, worst dope,” “megalomaniacal Teletubbie,” “unvarnished asshole,” and “Twitter twat.” Trump himself is known for bitter attacks against his opponents. What would you say to supporters of his who might read your book and claim that you are being hypocritical? And what would you say to people who agree with your critique of Trump but think that critics should take the “high road?”

Tom Breuer: Well, first of all, I’m not president. Yet. Apparently you no longer need any real qualifications, so maybe my once-annual St. Patrick’s Day bacchanals at Bazil’s wouldn’t be an obstacle after all.

Secondly, there is no high road anymore. Trump demolished it when he defended neo-Nazis after Charlottesville. We’re engaged in street warfare now — figuratively, anyway.

Finally, there’s a difference between punching up and punching down. Trump punches down. He insults immigrants and minorities and tried to yank health care away from millions of vulnerable Americans who depend on the ACA. Then he turned around and enriched his wealthy cronies through his tax scam while simultaneously insisting he was doing exactly the opposite.

He is to humanity what E. coli is to lettuce. Any legal means we can use to get him out of office or diminish his ability to terrorize the most helpless members of society are justified.

The book isn’t entirely a ranting screed, though admittedly that’s most of it. It’s also a call to arms for blue wavers in advance of the November election. That’s when we’ll all have the opportunity to channel our anger and make a real difference. At the end of the book I include several resources for helping to turn that blue wave into a tsunami. That’s a start, and I’m happy to pitch in, even if it means using a swear or two (or 500).

Media Rants: One thing I find extremely valuable about your book is the way in which it provides a chronology of all the absurd things that Trump has said and done since taking office. I understand the desire to lash out at Trump, but to what extent are you also trying to maintain a documentary record of –to put it in an Aldous J. Pennyfarthing kind of way—“what the f*ck is actually being done to us.” 

Tom Breuer: While writing and researching the book, I was struck by just how many Trump outrages — things that would have virtually defined any other president — had already fallen down the memory hole. We’re presented with new horrors on a daily basis, so it’s hard to dwell so much on any one thing. The book is a good reminder of just how abnormal, undignified, petty, and cruel Trump is. Maybe that’s its real value — reminding us that things really are as bad as they seem. By no means are we imagining it.

Media Rants: Aldous’ letters strike me as a cross between the late Hunter S. Thompson and Stephen Colbert if he was not constrained by the FCC. What literary and/or political criticism traditions do actually influence your writing?

Tom Breuer: Al Franken has always been the gold standard for me when it comes to political humor. He wrote a book that thoroughly deflated Rush Limbaugh when Limbaugh was still at the height of his influence. I was lucky enough to be a guest on his radio show while promoting “Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O’Reilly,” and he gave me my favorite review of the book, calling it “hilariously snarky … nutritional too.” Meaning he thought it was funny and informative, which is how I always viewed his writing. Needless to say, the accusations that forced him to resign were deeply disappointing.

Beyond that, yes, Colbert and The Daily Show have always given us “real news” to counteract the Fox scat that energizes so many conservatives.

I don’t think I can touch Hunter S. Thompson — at least not until mushrooms are legalized for therapeutic use.

Media Rants: You end the book with this message to President Trump: “The midterms are coming, friend. And 2020 isn’t far away. Namaste. And fuck right off . . . We’ll vote against treason and rot.” Are you engaging in wishful thinking there? If not, what leads you to believe that the midterms and 2020 will be bad for Trump?

Tom Breuer: According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregator, Trump’s approval rating has been underwater since day 15 of his presidency. We were all so shocked at his victory that we tend to forget that he’s never been all that popular or well respected. And the special elections have been canaries in a coalmine. So far we have just a few dead Republican canaries. By November, I expect that we’ll have dozens more.

Media Rants: Anything else you would like to add?

Tom Breuer: Vote.

MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism

April 4th is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. My guess is that few Americans know that King was killed in Memphis, fewer still know why he was in Memphis in the first place, and even fewer than that know anything about him other than that he "had a dream." At least Google has been working on adjustments to the search engine so that neo-nazi propaganda about King doesn't block out truthful content in searches. So there's that.

As for what King was doing in Memphis in the days leading up to his death, I urge everyone to read Wendi C. Thomas' spectacular piece in the March 30, 2018 New York Times called "How Memphis Gave Up on Dr. King's Dream." Thomas is the editor and publisher of MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism, a tremendous resource for understanding the intense opposition King faced when fighting for living wages in Memphis, and how that opposition has in some disturbing ways gotten worse 50 years later.

The MLK50 reporting team are a dedicated group of activists who plan to make sure that King's call for living wages and economic justice does not get lost in what will almost certainly be a mainstream media effort to whitewash King's legacy. Just watch, on April 4th we will hear about King the dreamer and be treated to mindless drivel about him. What we won't hear or see are rigorous accounts of the extent to which the problems Dr. King called out in 1968 exist in worse form today in large part because we failed to heed his warnings about where the country was headed. (Thankfully, there will be three documentaries airing this month that present a more complete view of King.)

In the last four-plus years of King's life, years that are almost completely ignored in mainstream discussions of him, he developed a keen understanding of the connections between American style capitalism, racism, and militarism. Wendi Thomas quotes King in 1967 as saying that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice, "cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power." Fifty years later we HAVE had a radical redistribution of political and economic power, but unfortunately the redistribution has gone from bottom to top instead of vice versa. In January Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! interviewed scholars and activists who shed light on the radicalism of King's latter years. 

What MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is doing with a mostly Memphis focus should be done by ethical journalists in all cities. We need better data about the state of inequality in our local communities and states, and better reporting on it. It should not have to be private think tanks collecting the data, and it should not have to be small circulation print media or obscure websites reporting it. How about this: for at least the month of April, the mainstream media should give as much attention to economic justice issues that impact literally all of us as they do to the president's moronic tweets.

America's Children Need UN Intervention

September 6, 2019 Update: Since I wrote this piece in March of 2018, the situation for America's children has become even MORE desperate. As mass shootings continue to be met mostly with "thoughts and prayers" by people empowered to actually do something about the crisis, almost all schools now have some kind of active shooter training. Unfortunately, as evidenced in this New Times Report (possibly hidden behind a paywall), such drills may succeed mostly in frightening children and thus creating just one more layer of trauma for them. Soon there will be another census taken, and by late 2020 we should have a better idea of just how bad are other children's health indicators in this country (poverty, access to health care, disease rates, etc.). 
TONY'S MEDIA RANTS from Old Man River Storytellers Group on Vimeo.

In the original column I argued that it's time for youth activists and their adult allies  to petition to bring the US government before the United Nations so that it can answer internationally for its shameful inattention to children's health and safety. I stand by that claim. The year 2019 is the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Disgracefully, the United States remains as the only nation in the world to refuse to sign on to the Convention. Here's what the UN says about the meaning of the 30th anniversary: 

The 30^th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a unique opportunity to put children’s rights, the Convention (along with its Optional Protocols) and its relevance for global peaceful development and co-existence high on the international agenda, to assess the status of child rights and take measures to strengthen awareness, understanding and the actual realisation of children’s rights worldwide.

It is our chance to take stock of progress until now and set in motion the further strengthening of the child rights movement in our changing global context where human rights are increasingly under threat!

What better way for activists in the United States to mark the 30th anniversary than to shame the United States government into signing the document? And maybe even shaming them into ACTING to protect children? 

Here's the original column: 

Every time I see the young survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre on television I am almost moved to tears. In part it's because, like millions of Americans, I am inspired by how they role model the courage and poise needed to speak truth to power. But more than that is the fact that the "adult leaders" in this country have actually put these young people in the position of fighting for their lives. What kind of a society places its youth in that position? Not a decent one. 

Can the so-called majority leaders of the United States Congress (and most State legislatures) say with a straight face that they are committed to the protection of children while eagerly accepting gun lobby cash and offering "thoughts and prayers" to the families of massacre victims and survivors? No they cannot. 

Can the mainstream media in the United States--a media that cannot question politicians as rigorously as teenagers can--hold the cowards in Congress and state legislatures accountable for failing to protect the nation's most vulnerable? No it cannot.  

So because America's children cannot rely on the key domestic institutions responsible for protecting them to do their jobs conscientiously, perhaps it is time to internationalize the struggle. Truthfully it is long past time. Today's youth activists in Parkland and across the nation, together with their adult allies, should take their case to the United Nations. Before rejecting this idea out of hand, hear me out. 

American activist youth of today, including those in Parkland, those associated with #BlackLivesMatter, and many others, strike me as the USA's versions of the wonderful Malala Yousafsai. Malala is the young Pakistani education-for-females activist who in 2012 survived an assassination attempt at the hands of the Taliban. In 2014 at the age of 17, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient in history. The United Nations recognized July 12, 2013 (Malala's 16th birthday) as "Malala Day." On that day she said "Malala day is not my day. Today is the day of every woman, every boy and every girl who have raised their voice for their rights." When I listen to the Parkland youth, I think of another quote from Malala on that day: “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

Like Malala, America's new young activists are not afraid to take on the powerful.

The only unfortunate part of the UN's celebration of Malala was that it led many to believe that extreme oppression of youth--including the silencing of their voices and exposing them to physical harm--was primarily a third world problem. Try telling the poisoned youth of Flint and their families that "things are worse in the third world." Try telling that to the survivors of mass shootings and the victims' families. They'll look at you like you're a fool or something worse. 

At least third world countries sign on to international agreements that put them on record as committing to do better for their children. In stark contrast, the United States is currently the only nation in the world that has not ratified the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the UN calls the "most widely ratified human rights treaty in history." In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said it was shameful that the US had not ratified the Convention, but then his administration did nothing meaningful to make ratification happen. Journalist Amy Lieberman reported recently on how the Trump Administration appears to be maneuvering internationally to weaken even further the USA's laggard commitment to eradicating violence against women and children. 

The United States is arguably in violation of much of the 1990 Convention, perhaps most obviously Article 6: 

1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life. 

2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child. 

The United States is the only country in the world that refuses to ratify the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Shame. Source: Wikipedia

We adult Americans give lip service to the "inherent right to life" of every child, yet it's clear that that right is greater or lesser based on the child's zip code. Some so-called adults only seem to care about unborn children. And the government's flat-out refusal to do anything serious about solving the problem of gun violence in schools makes it impossible for us to claim that we are ensuring to the "maximum extent possible" the survival and development of the child. In the USA in just the first two months of 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive, gun violence has killed or injured 91 children between the ages of 0-11, and 447 teens between the ages of 12-17. 

The Parkland youth have already had and will continue to have a powerful impact on local, state, and even the national government. They've pressured an NRA toady like President Trump to make surprisingly rational statements on gun safety. They've even managed to push private businesses like Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart to put a tiny measure of sanity in their policies on gun sales. 

But even if the movement were miraculously able to get the federal and/or state governments to support gun control measures with wide public support like universal background checks, raising the age for certain types of firearm purchases, and red flag policies that allow for confiscating guns from individuals that pose a clear threat, those would still represent not much more than a band aid in a society where millions of assault weapons would continue to exist without meaningful licensing or registration. Until we find a way to confront the problem of millions of unaccounted for guns in society, America's schoolchildren will never truly be safe from harm. 

Since the United States government has shown time and again that it will place the needs of the gun manufacturers and their lobby above the needs of that nation's most vulnerable citizens, it is time to request UN intervention. If the United States would ratify the 1990 Convention this would be an easier struggle because the government then would have to file reports indicating what kind of challenges to child health and welfare exist in the nation and how we might rectify them.

However, according to Human Rights Watch there is an optional "communications procedure" adopted by the UN in 2011 that allows the Committee on the Rights of the Child to hear complaints from individuals from member countries who feel the rights of children have been violated and that "domestic remedies have been exhausted." Human Rights Watch says that, "The committee may then investigate the complaints and make recommendations to the country responsible for the violation." The US has not ratified the Convention but it is a signatory to it; that by itself should allow for impacted individuals in our country to file complaints. 

Some might argue that it is too early to go to the UN. "Give us time to exhaust all domestic remedies," they will say. Seriously? We have now had so many school shootings that they have become normalized. We can pass tax breaks for millionaires without Congressional hearings because of the "urgent needs of our economy," yet protecting our children somehow does not merit the same urgency. The "thoughts and prayers" crowd not only prevent any meaningful legislation from passing, but they will not even allow the Centers For Disease Control to study the problem. Our domestic remedies were exhausted a long time ago, leaving behind a long trail of blood and tears. Our shameful inaction needs to be broadcast on the world stage. 

It's time to haul the United States government into the United Nations to have to answer for its refusal to protect children. Let the "thoughts and prayers" crowd have to defend their moral and political cowardice before an international body. Let's invite recommendations from the UN. Perhaps then we might move closer to replacing thoughts and prayers with real actions to protect children. 

Censored in 2017

Since 1976, Sonoma State University’s Project Censored has challenged the news media to meet their First Amendment responsibilities. Annually the Project compiles a volume of news stories “underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored in the United States.” Media critic Mark Crispin Miller once said this about Project Censored: 

“Most journalists in the United States believe the press here is free. That grand illusion only helps obscure the fact that, by and large, the US corporate press does not report what’s really going on, while tuning out, or laughing off, all those who try to do just that. Americans–now more than ever–need those outlets that do labor to report some truth. Project Censored is not just among the bravest, smartest, and most rigorous of those outlets, but the only one that’s wholly focused on those stories that the corporate press ignores, downplays, and/or distorts.

Project Censored is famous for its nontraditional understanding of censorship, defining it as "anything that interfered with the free flow of information in a society that purports to have a free press." They argue that censorship includes not just stories that were never published, but also "those that got such restricted distribution that few in the public are likely to know about them." I would argue further that modern censorship occurs when the corporate press allows itself to be exploited by privileging elite narratives that benefit established powers and deflect from information, argument, and testimony that expose the rot at the core of that establishment. 

Censored 2018: Press Freedoms in a "Post-Truth" World (Sven Stories Press) identifies what a panel of judges considered as the  top-25 most censored stories of 2016/17. The top 5: 

5.  Big Data and Dark Money Behind the 2016 election.  On how extreme right-wing hedge fund manager Robert Mercer (who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act) provided the critical funding necessary to prop up Donald Trump's "populist" revolution. 

4.  Voter Suppression in the 2016 Presidential Election. On how the impact of Shelby County v. Holder (the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act on a 5-4 vote) in the 2016 elections was never covered seriously by the mainstream press. 

3. Pentagon Paid UK PR Firm For Fake Al-Qaeda Videos. On how the Department of Defense secretly spent hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to employ a British firm to create literal fake news in Iraq. 

2. Over Six Trillion Dollars in Unaccountable Army Spending. On how the Pentagon continues to ignore federal law requiring annual audits at the same time Congress continues to vote for dramatic increases in military spending. 

1. Widespread Lead Contamination Threatens Children's Health, and Could Triple Household Water Bills. On the media's failure to create a sense of urgency following a Reuters' investigative report showing that "three thousand neighborhoods across the US had levels of lead poisoning more than double the rates found in Flint, MI at the peak of its contamination crisis."