Month: November 2016

The “special relationship” is very, very special in the age of Trump

by digby

I just wanted to share this primer from the BBC for reference in case you are confused about the “alt-right” is and the Breitbart-Bannon connection.

Just days after the US election, an ebullient Nigel Farage made his way to Trump Tower in New York – the first British politician to meet the president-elect.

“We’re just tourists!” Farage joked to waiting reporters.

By his side was his former aide and the London editor of Breitbart News, Raheem Kassam. And Kassam’s ultimate boss, Stephen Bannon, has been lined up for a top White House job as Trump’s chief strategist.

The White House was probably a distant dream when conservative entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart launched Breitbart.tv in 2007. It built on his earlier work for online outlets such as the conservative Drudge Report and liberal Huffington Post, along with an early iteration of his eponymous site which collected news links.

The site first gained notoriety with videos targeting liberal groups and politicians. In 2011, it scored a major scoop when it exposed former Democratic congressman Anthony Wiener’s sexting scandal.

In 2012, Andrew Breitbart died of heart failure. Bannon became executive chairman.

“The site used to be a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred conservative website that held liberals to account and resisted political correctness,” says Jesse Singal, a writer-at-large with New York Magazine who’s tussled with Breitbart in the past.

“They’ve turned much more extreme since Andrew Breitbart died.”

From its base in California, the site has expanded, opening bureaus in Texas, Jerusalem and, in 2014, London.

“We look at London and Texas as two fronts in our current cultural and political war,” Bannon said at the time.

At the outset of the marathon US election campaign, the site initially seemed to back Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

But a key moment came in March when Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields was grabbed by Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s then campaign manager. Charges were filed but later dropped. After Fields was criticised – and Lewandowski defended – by some of her Breitbart colleagues, there were several resignations from the website.

In August, Bannon was picked to lead Trump’s campaign. It was a sign of the site’s influence.

Patrick Howley, a former Breitbart reporter whose beat was the Hillary Clinton campaign, says the site doesn’t pretend to balance all sides of an issue.

“The ethic of objectivity as it’s traditionally formulated is not practised there,” he says. However he defends the spin by saying the site is up-front about it. “I never made any pretence about the fact that I did not want Hillary Clinton to be president.”

Future expansion targets include France and Germany.

“Their model is to identify areas where there are two ingredients, the potential to exploit or inflame racial anxieties, anti-Muslim sentiment, anti-feminist sentiment,” says Angelo Carusone, executive vice president of the left-wing think tank Media Matters.

He predicts they will back the National Front in France. “The second ingredient is a political opposition force that they can align with or consume to gain legitimacy.”

In Britain, Carusone says, UKIP was that force.

Breitbart timeline

2007: Andrew Breitbart starts Breitbart.tv

2011: Breitbart breaks the story of Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal

2012: Andrew Breitbart dies; Stephen Bannon takes over as executive chairman

2014: Breitbart opens a bureau in London

March 2016: Trump’s then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabs Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a rally. The resultant controversy leads several reporters and editors to resign

August 2016: Bannon appointed Trump campaign chief executive

October 2016: Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam launches a bid for the UKIP leadership using the slogan “Make UKIP Great Again”. He later withdraws

13 November 2016: Following the election, Bannon is picked to be Trump’s chief strategist

In the days since the election and Bannon’s appointment, there’s been a lot of coverage about the site’s most provocative content, including a set of much-discussed headlines:

This however is just one slice of Breitbart’s output, which is a hodgepodge of factual stories provided by news wires, provocative opinion designed to infuriate liberals and whip up conservatives, cheerleading for Trump and right-wing ideas, and attack pieces on celebrities, journalists and other perceived enemies.

The company produces videos, movies, radio shows and podcasts and has a huge social media presence.

It’s all presented in a tabloid style – and the site has no clear delineations between news, analysis, commentary and opinion.

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Kassam described the site’s style: “Is it ugly? Yes. Is it varnished? No. But is it truthful? Absolutely.”

Howley says the site’s approach is straightforward. “We are honest about it,” he says. “If you suspend objectivity you can build great sources and develop an audience and the information is all the same.”

Howley, who says there is no written code of ethics or guidelines for Breitbart journalists, argues the site tapped into the “populist side of the conservative movement which wasn’t really represented in the press”. He resigned from Breitbart on election night, saying that the company had grown and changed substantially in his time there and that he was interested in other reporting projects.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionRaheem Kassam during his brief campaign for the UKIP leadership

Editor-at-large Joel Pollak has denied the site is racist or sexist. The staff are “happy warriors”, Pollak told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Andrew Breitbart founded it to take on the mainstream media, to take on the institutional left and to take on the Republican Party establishment. There is in a sense a populist undercurrent in the website but that’s not angry.”

Over the last 18 months, Breitbart’s fortunes have risen in line with Trump’s.

According to web analytics company Comscore, the site has added millions of readers since Donald Trump started his run to the presidency. Its monthly US audience is now more than 19 million, which puts it ahead of many mainstream news sites.

In Britain it has a much narrower reach, even factoring in the UK’s smaller population – Comscore puts its monthly unique users at under 700,000.

If you visit the site and click around, you’re just as likely to find straight news (“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is looking forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump on ‘the twin interests of peace and security'”) as you are to see freewheeling pro-Trump hype (“It happened. We won! We now live in the Age of Daddy!”)

In that respect, Breitbart is distinct from the “fake news” industry that received so much attention after the election. Critics note that its stories might be made up of facts, but spun and deployed hard against its main bugbears – including liberals, refugees (particularly from the Muslim world), and feminism.

In August, the site published a story headlined “TB spiked 500 percent in Twin Falls during 2012, as Chobani Yoghurt opened plant“.

The story was one of several the site ran about a small city in Idaho and Chobani, one of America’s leading yogurt brands. Chobani is owned by Hamdi Ulukaya, a billionaire immigrant from Turkey. Ulukaya has ties to President Obama and has employed refugees at his plants in Idaho and elsewhere.

The story linked a rise in tuberculosis cases to the yogurt plant and refugees living locally.

But there was more to the story. The “500 percent” spike in the headline represented an increase from one case – to six. Those six cases, according to Tom Shanahan of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, were all diagnosed prior to the Chobani plant opening in December 2012.

By 2015, the number of cases was back down to just one.

Shanahan says that the Breitbart story was “misleading”, that the tuberculosis spike was not statistically significant and that it could not be linked to the yogurt plant or refugees in the area.

In the UK, following the EU referendum in June, several stories on the site poked holes in a reports which suggested that hate crimes had spiked by 57%.

The cause and effect around current events and hate crimes is complicated and awareness of how to report them boosts statistics. However there was no mention on Breitbart of later analysis by the Home Office which showed a 41% rise in hate crimes after the Brexit vote.

“It’s a more radical Fox News. It’s living in a different world, a much more fearful world, where rumour and innuendo are passed around as fact,” says Singal.

Breitbart also runs sharply critical stories on other journalists and news outlets and mocks reporters who complain about trolls and slurs. “Every special snowflake reporter with a Twitter account wanted in on the sweet victimhood action,” taunted one writer, criticising journalists who found themselves being shouted at by Trump supporters at campaign rallies.

Mainstream media reporters who have been the subject of Breitbart pieces have at times found themselves on the receiving end of online trolling. The BBC has spoken to several who have had rape and death threats against themselves and their families, and several from news outlets in the US and the UK said they or their colleagues have been cautious about writing about the site for fear of the resultant backlash.

There’s no implication that Breitbart reporters or employees are directing the trolling or participating in it themselves. (Although one Breitbart writer, Milo Yiannopoulos, was banned from Twitter for firing off unpleasant messages to actress Leslie Jones.) And Breitbart is far from the only news source to whip its audience into action.

At the same time the company and its journalists don’t hesitate to complain about alleged abuse against themselves.

Stephen Bannon: Breitbart’s executive chairman, he left to run the Trump campaign and has been lined up for a job as senior strategist in the Trump White House. In a rare speech in 2014, he had words of praise for UKIP

Nigel Farage: The UKIP leader is a regular Breitbart columnist

Raheem Kassam: Hired by Bannon to be Breitbart’s London editor, he was a chief adviser to Farage during the 2015 general election, and briefly ran for UKIP leader himself before dropping out

Robert Mercer: A Breitbart funder and investor in Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by EU referendum Leave campaigners and the Trump campaign. His daughter, Rebekah Mercer, is part of Trump’s transition team

Arron Banks: This major UKIP donor backed Kassam’s leadership bid and bankrolled the Leave.EU campaign, enlisting the help of Cambridge Analytica

Raheem Kassam, the site’s London editor, made a brief run for UKIP leader. After dropping out of the race, Kassam said he would pursue a harassment case against journalists from the Times, claiming they intimidated his parents in the course of writing a profile on him. The Times characterised the encounter as a “short, polite conversation with a family member” in the course of “standard reporting practice”.

The site, which frequently argues in favour of free speech, has vowed to sue an unnamed media outlet for calling it a “white nationalist” website. Thus far, no legal action has commenced.

Breitbart’s funding sources are somewhat obscure. As a private company, Breitbart has declined to reveal its investors or how it makes money.

In 2014, before its overseas expansion, Bannon said that the site wasn’t quite profitable. There are ads on the site and it also sells merchandise such as campaign coffee cups.

It has been reported that the company has been funded by Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund manager who is the founder of Cambridge Analytica, a data firm which worked for the Leave.EU campaign as well as Trump’s bid for the White House.

Mercer’s daughter Rebekah is part of Trump’s transition team.

Another big Leave.EU backer was UKIP donor Arron Banks, who accompanied Farage and Kassam to Trump Tower.

In Washington, the big question people have been asking about Bannon is how he will act in the Trump administration, and what the role of Breitbart will be once he’s there.

Prior to the election, Bannon said he would return to the company – but that was before Trump’s victory and his White House appointment. Under ethics rules, Bannon has 30 days from taking office in January to declare his financial ties to Breitbart.

Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart spokesman who resigned after the Fields incident, says in his view the site’s function won’t change when Trump becomes president.

“It will be the propaganda arm of the administration,” he says.

“Their mandate is to create conflict, controversy and divisiveness – as well as propping up President Trump,” he says.

But conservative journalist Cathy Young, who clashed with Breitbart after denouncing what she saw as the site’s whitewashing of the extremist alt-right, argues that those might take a back seat to a more pragmatic political style.

“My guess would be that Bannon will be less of a champion of the alt-right than a political pit bull who will use whatever weapon he can to pursue the victory of the person he’s promoting.”

For his part, Farage has offered to act as a conduit between the US and the UK – a proposal that Downing Street quickly rebuffed.

Breitbart did not respond to requests to comment for this story, and several reporters and staff members also did not respond to questions.

Carusone, from Media Matters, thinks that calling Breitbart “propaganda” slightly misstates its role, and says its real function in a Trump White House could be to shore up support on the far right.

“There’s been a consensus in some parts of the media that Trump is softening on some of his policies,” he says. “Part of the role of Breitbart will be to give a wink and a nod to Trump’s most fervent supporters to let them know he’s still on their side.”

I wrote about this for Salon as well, here and here. The second piece sadly assumed a Trump loss and wondered where they would go from there. What they will do with real power is truly terrifying.

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Trump wants to be president of all Americans who agree with him


by digby

So Mike Pence reassured everyone today that Trump is nothing like the cretinous proto-fascists he appears to be and we can all relax:

Here’s Dear Leader at 3 AM this morning:

He’s very bothered by this. It’s the fourth tweet he’s done since it happened, one of which he deleted.

You know who else surprisingly won an election one November?

by digby

Him by Timothy Snyder at Slate:

His election that November came as a surprise. The conservative intellectuals had made telling arguments against his racism and conspiracy thinking. Rival nationalists had mocked his affection for a foreign tyrant. Businessmen had explained that economic isolation could only harm an export economy. All to no avail.

His followers had faith, of course. They had roared at his rallies and echoed his slogans. They had come out to vote, in higher numbers than expected, especially working-class men and women. Even so, the results of the election were paradoxical. The left received 1 million more votes than his party. But due to the vagaries of the electoral system he was called upon to form a government. His followers exulted, but the various right-wing elites preserved their calm. Although they had failed to keep him from power, they were sure that they could control him. He was good at convincing his followers that he was a revolutionary and convincing others that he was harmless.

His administration was at first a coalition of the old right and his new right. The members of the major left-wing party, historically larger than his, had a sense that something was afoot. But the left was divided upon itself and unsure about its leadership; its own conflicts could, from moment to moment, seem more pressing than the affairs of the country as a whole. He did not invent the highway, as his propaganda claimed, but he did support public works. This sort of thing helped to confuse the left and the workers.

Among much of the ordinary citizenry there was a certain faith that the political elite had matters under control. Among the elite there was a certain faith that state institutions would somehow protect themselves, that the rule of law and administrative habit would somehow maintain themselves. It was a minority that exulted in his power and a smaller minority that broke the windows and painted the symbols. Somehow, amid the misplaced hopes, his followers set the tone. As the mood changed, much of the citizenry began to think ahead about what he would want and make adjustments in advance. This made his task infinitely simpler.
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Writers reflected upon how he was changing the language. He defined the world as a source of endless threat and other countries as cradles of countless enemies. Global conspiracies were supposedly directed at his country and its uniquely righteous people. His left-wing opponents and the national minorities, he insisted, were not individuals but expressions of implacable international enmity to the righteous demands of his own people. He said that he spoke for his people, that he was their voice. He had no concern for factuality; what he said about others was meant to generate a certain fiction. In some measure, he was working within the philosophical conventions of his time. Important thinkers of the era had declared that the idea of facts understood by individuals was humbug, opening the way for a sense of identity to be confused with the apprehension of truth. But he was also aware that mass media created the possibility to project big lies with such force that they drowned out the small truths. He had a certain undeniable charisma, and he was the first major politician of a new media age.

The terrorist attack came as a surprise. It was unclear whether he planned this himself, but it hardly mattered. He blamed the left, banned its parties, and had its leaders put in camps. A state of emergency was declared and never lifted. A one-party state emerged. The division of powers vanished. The parliament became a rubber stamp. The bureaucracy proved loyal to him. Bright and ambitious men with law degrees were found. For many lawyers and judges, professional ethics were somehow submerged in an understanding of the greater good of the nation, state, or race. Intelligent people found ways to place their own intellectual and moral evolution within this or that philosophical or legal tradition. The legal stigmatization of a chosen minority had the political consequence of binding everyone else closer to the state. The moment citizens did not oppose this measure, they were in effect supporting it. The moment they took advantage of it (by enrolling their children in schools that suddenly had empty places, for example), they were co-opted by it.

He was good at convincing followers he was a revolutionary and others that he was harmless.

Many of those lawyers wore uniforms of a certain special kind. They were elite members of a certain institution, his bodyguard. He had called upon them to throw out dissenters at his rallies and to beat up opponents. An odd thing had happened when he had come to power. Suddenly people who had always presented themselves as being in opposition to the state were comfortable bearing arms for their personal leader. The process was of course an unruly one; some of these people had to be purged. He claimed, falsely, that a coup d’état had been staged against him and had one part of his bodyguard murder the leaders of another (and some of the old right-wing leaders in the bargain). Now his bodyguard started to seem like a means of social advance. Trained in racism and conspiratorial thinking, its men penetrated the organs of state, especially the police. If anyone had a chance to resist at this point, it was the commanders of the military and the directors of intelligence. A few of them were inclined to do so, but they overestimated themselves, failed to seek allies and counsel, and waited too long. Once the war started, it was too late.

The war came as a surprise. Although he had spoken endlessly about the need for struggle, it had not been so easy to find the pretext or the partner. In the beginning he had to concentrate on breaking treaties and pressuring neighbors. But then another strongman was happy to offer him an alliance. This brought what seemed like an easy beginning to conquest, and during combat political opposition became all but unthinkable. The bodyguard and the corporations negotiated exploitative public-private partnerships in conquered lands, known as “ghettos” or “camps.” The army was followed into the field by the paramilitary, which had its own tasks, such as mass murder. In the setting of war, not just the paramilitary but the police, the army, and even civilians carried out mass killings on a stupendous scale.

These crimes bound them all to him and to his mission and guaranteed that they would fight to the end. Having done great evil, they found it easy to imagine that the world was against them. His war would be lost. Only his crimes would be immortal. Before he killed himself he blamed his own country for his failures. And a nation that had once seemed destined to shape a century fell into the shade.

Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and the author of Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

Good morning…

What will they think of next?
by Tom Sullivan

“Bless your heart” is an expression slowly dying out across a South awash (as everywhere else) in social media and a gagillion cable channels. Depending on subtle cues in delivery, as many know, it was an overly genteel way southerners once insulted you with a smile on their faces. (R.I.P., Dixie Carter.)

We note today that Republicans in North Carolina are especially ungracious losers, bless their hearts. Two tricksy maneuvers rumored to be considered as GOP workarounds for November 8 losses illustrate the case.

First, Gov. Pat McCrory is falling further behind Attorney General Roy Cooper in the vote count in a very tight race for governor. Cooper’s November 8 margin has grown steadily as Boards of Election across the state canvass absentee and provisional ballots. The State Board of Elections reported Democrat Cooper with a 6,600 vote lead on Friday; the Cooper campaign believes the final vote spread will be greater. The News and Observer reports:

Cooper, the Democrat, has held a lead of about 5,000 votes since Election Day. That lead has increased to 7,448 votes, according to Marc Elias who spoke to reporters in a phone-in conference. He said he expects that lead to grow slightly, based on the mix of counties that have yet to report outstanding ballots.

McCrory is crying “voter fraud” in an attempt to cast doubt on the process, claiming in over 50 counties (Republicans control the boards of election in all of them) that “up to 200 ballots should be thrown out because they were cast under the names of dead people or by felons or individuals who voted more than once, according to the campaign.” Rumors are circulating that the GOP-led legislature could step in to decide the election:

The provision has only been used once before in modern history, when lawmakers named June Atkinson state superintendent of public instruction over Bill Fletcher in 2005, in a process that took nine months to resolve. At the time, the legislature was controlled by Democrats; Atkinson was a Democrat and Fletcher was a Republican.

But the main issue then was whether some 11,000 provisional ballots should be counted even though they were cast in precincts outside of where the voters lived. This time the question is whether computer problems in Durham County led to errors in the vote count that could change the outcome. On Tuesday, the Durham elections board chairman, a Republican, said the board has not seen evidence of any problems.

House Speaker Tim Moore tells the press that invoking that process (explained here) would be “an absolute last resort.” We shall see. Atkinson lost her bid for reelection this year.

Second, after Democrat Michael Morgan won a State Supreme Court race on Election Day (tipping the ideological balance of the court leftward), more than rumors are flying that Republicans might invoke a provision in the state constitution to get it back through (presumably) lame-duck appointments by Pat McCrory. That is, by court-packing. Zoë Carpenter explains for The Nation:

Last week, the conservative John Locke Foundation argued that the Legislature has the authority to expand the high court by two additional justices, who could be appointed by McCrory during his final weeks in office. The vote could take place during a December special session, which McCrory is expected to call under the guise of passing an aid package related to Hurricane Matthew. This would tip the balance of power on the court back to the Republicans.

The state chapter of the NAACP is already preparing a lawsuit in the event that the Legislature does try to pack the court. (Republicans in the General Assembly are sending conflicting signals about whether it’s really on the table.) “There is no justification for this. The court has had seven members since 1936, and there is no increase in the volume of cases that would dictate this,” said the Rev. William Barber II, the president of the North Carolina NAACP. “Clearly it is simply to engage in some form of legislative coup.” Barber believes court-packing would violate the Voting Rights Act; Wake Forest Law professor Harold Lloyd argues it could also violate the state Constitution.

Bless their hearts.

Republican legislators backed into this cactus after losing judicial races to Democrats in 2014, a year where across the country Republicans won seemingly everything:

In nonpartisan judicial elections in 2014, North Carolina Democrats also took three out of three contested Supreme Court races and won two out of three contested Appeals Court races. And those, in a sweep election where the GOP should have won it all. Republicans in the North Carolina legislature responded in 2015 by changing the way North Carolina elects judges.

Naturally, this was not an outcome they could allow to stand. So Republican legislature first tried to make judicial races “retention elections.” A three-judge state panel this year ruled that unconstitutional and a split State Supreme Court affirmed the ruling. So Republicans settled for switching the judicial contests to partisan races:

Appellate judicial races had been nonpartisan since 2004. The House passed a bill last year that made races for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals partisan. But the Senate passed a different version, leaving out the Supreme Court and making only the Court of Appeals partisan. That version became law.

Morgan and Edmunds, then, were on the ballot with no party by their name, and Morgan was listed first. In the five Court of Appeals races, parties were included and each Republican was listed first. They went five-for-five.

In the State Supreme Court race, however, the African-American Judge Morgan won by nine points, tipping the court leftward unless Republican legislators, bless their hearts, think up some other way of undoing the results of the election.

Saturday Night at the Movies


Iggy popcorn: Gimme Danger *** & Danny Says **½

By Dennis Hartley

Well it’s 1969 OK, all across the USA
It’s another year for me and you
Another year with nuthin’ to do,
Last year I was 21, I didn’t have a lot of fun
And now I’m gonna be 22
I say oh my, and a boo-hoo
-from “1969” by The Stooges

They sure don’t write ‘em like that anymore. The composer is one Mr. James Osterberg, perhaps best known by his show biz nom de plume, Iggy Pop. Did you know that this economical lyric style was inspired by Buffalo Bob…who used to encourage Howdy Doody’s followers to limit fan letters and postcards to “25 words or less”? That’s one of the revelations in Gimme Danger, Jim Jarmusch’s cinematic fan letter to one of his idols.

Jarmusch dutifully traces the history of Iggy and the Stooges, from Iggy’s initial foray as a drummer, to the Stooges’ 1967 debut (then billing themselves as “The Psychedelic Stooges”), to their signing with Elektra Records the following year (which yielded two seminal proto-punk albums before the label unceremoniously dropped them in 1971) to the association with David Bowie that gave birth to 1973’s Raw Power, up to the present.

While LP sales were less than stellar (and forget about radio exposure, outside of free-form and underground FM formats), the band’s legend was largely built on their gigs. From day one, Iggy was a live wire on stage; unpredictable, dangerous, possessed. Whether smearing peanut butter (or blood) on his chest while growling out songs, undulating his weirdly flexible body into gymnastic contortions, or impulsively flinging himself into the crowd (he invented the “stage dive”), Iggy Pop was anything but boring.

Keep in mind, this was a decade before Sid Vicious was to engage in similar stage antics. The peace ‘n’ love ethos was still lingering in the air when the Stooges stormed onstage, undoubtedly scaring the shit out of a lot of hippies. However, once they hitched their wagon to fellow Detroit music rebels/agitprop pioneers the MC5 (their manifesto: “Loud rock ‘n’ roll, dope, and fucking in the streets!”) they began to build a solid fan base, which became rabid. Unfortunately, film footage from this period is scant; but Jarmusch manages to dig up enough clips to give us a rough idea of what the vibe was at the time.

Jarmusch is a bit nebulous regarding the breakups, reunions, and shuffling of personnel that ensued during the band’s heyday (1967-1974), but that may not be so much his conscious choice as it is acquiescing to (present day) Iggy’s selective recollections (Iggy does admit drugs were a factor). While Jarmusch also interviews original Stooges Ron Asheton (guitar), and his brother Scott Asheton (drums), their footage is sparse (sadly, both have since passed away). Bassist Dave Alexander, who died in 1975, is relegated to archival interviews. Guitarist James Williamson (who played on Raw Power) and alt-rock Renaissance man Mike Watt (the latter-day Stooges bassist) contribute anecdotes as well.

Many might assume, judging purely by the simple riffs, minimal lyrics and primal stage persona that there wouldn’t be much going on upstairs with the Ig…but that would be a highly inaccurate assumption. To the contrary, Iggy is much smarter than you think he is; a surprisingly erudite raconteur who is highly self-aware and actually quite thoughtful when it comes to his art. It might surprise you to learn that one of his earliest creative influences (aside from space-jazz maestro Sun Ra and, erm, Soupy Sales) was American avant-garde composer Harry Partch, who utilized instruments made out of found objects.

A few nitpicks aside, this is the most comprehensive retrospective to date regarding this truly influential band; it was enough to make this long-time fan happy, and to perhaps enlighten casual fans, or the curious. As for the rest of you, I say: Oh my, and a boo hoo!

Interestingly, Iggy pops up in another new documentary. In fact, there is much cross-pollination between Gimme Danger and Danny Says (on PPV), Brendan Toller’s uneven yet quaffable portrait of NYC scenester/music publicist/DJ/fanzine editor Danny Fields.

Fields was the talent scout/A&R guy/whatever (his job title is never made 100% clear…more on that in a moment) who “discovered” The Stooges while on assignment from Elektra Records to scope out the Detroit music scene in 1968. While the record company was primarily interested in the MC5, Fields convinced the suits to tack the Stooges on as a “two-fer” signing deal: $20,000 for the MC5 + $5,000 for the Stooges (!)

That’s jumping a bit ahead in Fields’ involvement with the music biz, which appears (according to Toller’s film) to have been attributable to a series of happy accidents, which begins with him falling into a managing editor position with the teenybopper fanzine Datebook in 1966. Within months of landing the gig, Fields found himself at the center of the infamous John Lennon “bigger than Jesus” controversy, stemming from a highlighted quote in a Datebook interview (his editorial decision). The consequences? Death threats against the band, Beatle record bonfires in the Deep South, universal condemnation by church leaders…essentially putting the kibosh on touring for the Fabs.

Whoops. I think we all owe Yoko an apology.

Thanks to his music journalist cred, he soon gains entree with the Warhol Factory crowd, which leads to his association with The Velvet Underground and a long-time friendship with Lou Reed, Nico, et al. This essentially plants him perennially thereafter at the epicenter of the New York arts scene, where, like a rock ‘n’ roll Forrest Gump, he manages to pal around with everybody who’s anybody from the late 60s ‘til now. He did publicity for The Doors, “discovered” and co-managed The Ramones, did windows, etc.

So why haven’t most people on the planet heard of him? I like to think of myself as a rock ‘n’ roll geek, with an encyclopedic brain full of worthless music trivia…and even I was blissfully unaware of this person until I stumbled across the film on cable the other night. So I am going to have to take all of the gushing interviewees’ word for it that Fields was a “punk pioneer” and essentially the musical tastemaker of the last 5 decades.

Fields proves a raconteur of sorts (the one about a meeting he arranged between Jim Morrison and Nico is amusing) but many anecdotes lead nowhere. For someone allegedly at the vanguard of the music scene for 50 years, he offers little insight. Most of Fields’ reminiscences are variations on “Well, I thought these guys were kinda cute, and I liked their music, so I told so-and-so about them, then I introduced these guys to some other famous guys.” For the most part, it adds up to 104 minutes of glorified name-dropping.

Still, the film is perfectly serviceable as a loose historical chronicle of the NYC music scene during its richest period (via numerous snippets of archival footage), and nostalgic boomers will likely find cameos by the likes of Alice Cooper, Judy Collins, Lenny Kaye, Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, Jonathan Richman, Iggy Pop, etc. to be enough to hold their interest (although again, more context and/or insight would have sweetened the pot).

The film reminded me of another rock documentary, George Hickenlooper’s The Mayor of Sunset Strip (my review), which profiled L.A. scenester/club manager/DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, who, like Danny Fields, managed to stumble into the midst of every major music sea change from the 1960s onward, rubbing shoulders with any rock ‘n’ roll luminary you’d care to name. Which begs the same question regarding Fields that I posed of Bingenheimer: Is he a true music “impresario”, or merely a lottery-winning super fan?

More reviews at Den of Cinema

Not helping

by digby

That’s from Jen Sorenson at DKos.

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Your gross Nazi story o’ the day

by digby

There are a lot of them. This one caught my eye:

Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch NYC Memorial Park Defaced With Swastikas, Pro-Donald Trump Graffiti

The words “Go Trump” were spraypainted on the park’s grounds in Brooklyn Heights. 

Since Donald Trump’s election last week, there has been an uptick in the amount of “biased-based attacks” across the nation. One of the latest victims is the the New York City memorial park in honor of the late Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch.

The Adam Yauch Park in Brooklyn Heights was defaced with graffiti of swastikas and the words “Go Trump” on Friday (Nov. 18). Yauch, like the rest of his Beastie Boys bandmates, was Jewish.

This anti-Semitic stuff is happening all over the country.  The white nationalist “alt-right” is neo-Nazi. But we knew that. Their leader is going to be in the White House on January 20th.

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The model

by digby

And I’m not talking about Melania Trump.

James Fallows explains:

As a study of oratorical styles, this is genuinely worth watching, even if you don’t understand a word of Italian. Spend even 30 or 40  seconds and you will see what I mean. Or for a highlight skip to the passage from 0:50 to 1:50.

The speaker’s enunciation is so emphatic and precise, his wording so blunt and simple, and his argument so straight-ahead that even I, who last coped with Italian many years ago, can follow just what he is telling us. Oversimplified, the message is: make Italy great again! (And specifically its navy.) But again the real message has nothing to do with a particular language. It involves personal carriage, facial expression, stance of dominance, and interaction with crowd. I am sorry I had not taken time to watch this before. (Thanks to John Kenney for the lead.)

Trump retweeted this, by the way:

Yep. It’s the affect. Strutting dominance. But we knew that.

Important to remember it though. As the press, eager to curry favor, makes him normal, we should guard against forgetting what he actually is. A fascist.

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by digby

… well, legitimate sexual assault anyway. Your new Attorney General ladies, when asked about Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” comments:

SESSIONS: This was very improper language, and he’s acknowledged that. 

TWS: But beyond the language, would you characterize the behavior described in that as sexual assault if that behavior actually took place? 

SESSIONS: I don’t characterize that as sexual assault. I think that’s a stretch. I don’t know what he meant— 

TWS: So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault? 

SESSIONS: I don’t know. It’s not clear that he—how that would occur.

I can tell you how that occurs. A misogynist monster sticks his hand between your legs and squeezes your vulva without permission. If you’re wearing a dress he might even reach underneath and stick his fingers inside your underwear, inside of you.

This has happened to many of us. It’s happened to me. It’s disgusting.

Trump knew he could get away with it and probably much worse. And now so do a lot of other men, including young ones who see there’s no sanction against it.

This sexist, racist backlash is going to be awful.

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Why would any woman want to do this?

by digby

I admire women who go into politics, but I can’t imagine wanting to wade into this sewer. I can barely stand to read about it and watch it anymore. The idea of actually participating makes me feel breathless and nauseous.

Anyway, here are some statistics on where people see sexism in media:

There is agreement among voters that social media followed by cable news and broadcast news are the top places that they see the most sexist treatment of women candidates and elected officials, according to research conducted during the final days of the U.S. presidential election.

Twenty-seven percent of voters said that they see the most sexism toward women candidates and elected officials in social media, compared to 16 percent for cable television news and 12 percent for broadcast television news. Talk radio, magazines, blogs, friends and family, and newspapers were cited less frequently, according to the survey, which was commissioned by Name It. Change It a joint non-partisan media-monitoring and accountability project of the Women’s Media Center and She Should Run. The NICI project studies and documents sexist media coverage of women candidates and public leaders. Voters were asked to choose the source that has the most sexist treatment of female political figures in the recent election.

“This research shows an awareness of media sexism toward women candidates and elected officials and affirms the power of the media in shaping opinions, influencing perceptions, and fostering stereotypes,” said Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center. “The fact that 87 percent of voters could report seeing sexist media coverage of women candidates underscores both the problem and the need for media accountability for this kind of content—especially on social media, which had substantially more reports of sexism than other media platforms. Women swim in a sea of media sexism every day, and the impact on our culture and on the roles for women in society is bad for women and bad for democracy.”

“It’s very telling that when voters were asked to choose a political source that tends to have the most sexist treatment of women candidates and elected officials, only 13 percent couldn’t choose a source,” said Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners. “It shows that voters were aware and acknowledge that they’re seeing sexist content about female politicians on their screens, across the airwaves, and in print.”

Ninety-two percent of millennial voters offered their opinion on the most sexist media coverage of women candidates.

“We’ve told millions of young women and girls that anything is possible. And many believe it to be true. But when 92 percent of millennial voters can report seeing sexist treatment of women candidates, it raises the question: How does this affect the aspirations of girls who one day wish to run for office?” said Erin Loos Cutraro, co-founder and CEO of She Should Run.

Voters’ Views of Sexist Treatment of Women Candidates by Media by Age, Race, Political Affiliation:

The research illustrated the variances in how voters see sexist treatment of women candidates in media by age, race, and political affiliation.

Thirty-nine percent of voters under the age of 35 said social media tended to have the most sexist treatment of women, with significantly smaller percentages saying cable television news and broadcast news.

Latino and African American voters were more likely to say that sexist treatment was more rampant on social media than other sources. Thirty-two percent of Latinos cited social media as the most sexist while 31 percent of African Americans did so. This was especially true for African American and Latino men, at 37 percent and 40 percent, respectively. More than a quarter, 26 percent, of white voters, white men, and white women said social media is the most sexist.

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