Month: October 2017

The idol maker: Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives ***
By Dennis Hartley

A long distance, directory assistance, area code 212
Say hey, A & R-this is mister rhythm and blues
He said hello, and put me on hold
To say the least the cat was cold
He said don’t call us, child…we’ll call you.

-from “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You”, by Sugarloaf

In Hit Men, Fredric Dannen’s excellent 1990 book recounting the golden era of the major record label power brokers, the author writes:

Rock historians tend to romanticize the pioneers of the rock and roll industry. It is true that the three large labels of the fifties—RCA Victor, Decca, and Columbia, which CBS had bought in 1938—were slow to recognize the new music. […] 

The pioneers deserve praise for their foresight but little for their integrity. Many of them were crooks. Their victims were usually poor blacks, the inventors of rock and roll, though whites did not fare much better. […] 

The modern record industry, which derives half its revenues from rock, worships its early founders. It has already begun to induct men such as disc jockey and concert promoter Alan Freed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When veteran record men wax nostalgic about the fifties, they often speak of the great “characters” who populated the business.

One of the direct descendants of those “characters” (and also profiled in Dannen’s book) is legendary A & R man Clive Davis. Davis was president of Columbia Records from 1966-1973, and founder and president of Arista Records 1974-2000 (when he founded J Records). In 2000, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the non-performer’s category. He was chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group from 2002-2008; currently he is the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment (at age 85).

Davis is also the subject of a new documentary, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives. You should know up front that Chris Perkel’s film was made with Davis’ full blessing and cooperation; so if you are looking for an expose of the cutthroat music business, you will be disappointed (for a more unvarnished portrait of Mr. Davis and his peers, I recommend Dannen’s book). Still, music fans should find it a worthwhile watch.

Putting the generally hagiographic tone of the film aside, the title’s “soundtrack of our lives” conceit is actually not too far off the mark. As is recounted in the film, the lawyer-turned-record company talent scout came roaring out of the gate by cannily raiding the embarrassment of new and exciting talent on display at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

After watching Janis Joplin’s jaw-dropping performance at the festival, he immediately signed Big Brother and the Holding Company (good call!). Other notable artists who joined the Columbia roster under Davis’ tenure and mentorship: Santana, Laura Nyro, The Electric Flag, The Chambers Brothers, Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Loggins & Messina, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, and Earth Wind and Fire.

Unfortunately, Davis ended up getting fired from CBS in the mid-70s for alleged misappropriation of company funds for personal use. Details of this period are glaringly glossed over in the film; we are only offered Davis’ contention that he was the sacrificial lamb in a company-wide payola scandal that he denies having any direct involvement in.

Arguably, this could have been the best thing that ever happened to him, as Davis dusted himself off and founded Arista Records shortly thereafter. While he didn’t necessarily “discover” every artist on the label, he did assemble an impressive lineup that would seem to affirm his “golden ear” for talent: Barry Manilow, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Gil Scott-Heron, Eric Carmen, Air Supply, Ray Parker Jr., Carly Simon, The Grateful Dead, etc. Davis has also displayed a talent for helping give long-established artists with waning sales a second wind in their careers; the film explores how he “reintroduced” Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, The Grateful Dead and Santana to a new generation of fans.

Not surprisingly, a sizeable portion of the film is devoted to Davis’ most storied client relationship, which was with Whitney Houston. Under Davis’ mentorship, Houston became one of the biggest selling artists of all time. Their partnership was at once professional and paternal; Davis’ recollections of his attempts to help her overcome the struggles with addiction that led to her sadly untimely end are very personal and moving.

As I inferred, music fans will find the film absorbing (if not necessarily revelatory). I would have liked to have learned a little more about Davis’ “process” as a talent scout and an idol maker; maybe a few more anecdotes about working directly with specific artists (at times as a de facto producer in the studio) might have spiced things up. Still, as a study of what is literally a dying breed of “hit men”, this single should make the charts.

# # #

Side 2: Speaking of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…

While I abhor the concept of tossing creative artists into the gladiatorial pit (art, prose, poetry, music and film are not competitive sports), my sworn duties as a pop culture critic occasionally require me to add my two cents worth of bread, in regard to such circuses.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced their 19 nominees for induction in 2018: Bon Jovi, Kate Bush, The Cars, Depeche Mode, Dire Straits, Eurythmics, J. Geils Band, Judas Priest, LL Cool J, The MC5, The Meters, Moody Blues, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Nina Simone, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Link Wray, and The Zombies. Worthy artists all, but (this is what I hate about “contests”) how do I justify my 5 picks (the Hall’s yearly limit for new inductees) without seeming to denigrate the rest? By doing my job and plowing forward (alphabetically):

Kate Bush – While I fear she has a snowball’s chance in hell to actually get selected (I’ve noticed the Hall tends to snub artists who defy genre), I’m one longtime fan who is happy to see she has at least been nominated. Depending on what day of the week it is, you could file Kate Bush under singer-songwriter, performance artist, progressive rock, experimental, folk, chamber-pop, electronica, et al. By the time she was 16, she already had demos of around 50 compositions, several of which caught the ear of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, who shopped them to music execs, helping launch her recording career. Her music comes from a place of sharp intelligence and sublime aesthetic rarely matched (her 4-octave range doesn’t hurt). And she’s been doing this for 40 years…so I say, yes…let her in!

Best 3 albums: Never For Ever, The Dreaming, Hounds of Love

The Secret Service has spent at least $137,505 to rent golf carts to protect President Trump this year at his private clubs in New Jersey and Florida.

Ok, so the Secret Service does need to be with the president when he golfs. And he does like to golf because all those photo-ops ad tweets are stressful.

But he goes to his own golf courses meaning that the taxpayers are putting that money into his own pockets. That’s the real scam.

He is profiting from the presidency in a hundred different ways by doing this kind of stuff. It may seem penny ante  considering that he’s supposedly a billionaire, but remember, this is a guy who was hawking steaks and cheap neckties in in he days before he became president. He’s been making his money with low level cons and cheap consumer goods for a long time. Bilking the taxpayers for golf carts and the like is right up his alley.

By the way:

In August, USA TODAY first reported that the Secret Service can no longer pay the overtime for hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast. Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year. 

.

Fox and the “fine people” of the neo-fascist alt-right

by digby

They’re just going there, all the way:

Fox News has been trying to normalize white supremacy for years. But since Donald Trump’s election, hosts, guests, and contributors on Fox are now openly defending white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Everyone is well aware that Trump has been continually signaling his support to white supremacists since the 2016 presidential campaign. He retweets them, refuses to immediately disavow them, and even defendsthem. And Fox News is right there to validate him at every turn.

Fox News personalities repeat his talking points without question (and he repeats theirs). They claim that Trump has done everything he can to condemn these groups and everyone should accept it. They tell viewers to be more understanding of where neo-Nazis are coming from, but don’t extend the same empathy to NFL athletes who have been peacefully protesting racial injustice by taking the knee during the pre-game national anthem. They praise Trump for not jumping to any conclusions. They make ridiculous comparisons that falsely equate white supremacists with minority groups fighting for equal rights. Fox host Tucker Carlson has even promoted a social media app that’s been called “a haven for white nationalists.”

When white supremacists hear the White House and a major news network repeating and amplifying their ideas, they rejoice because, according to Heidi Beirich at the Southern Poverty Law Center, “It builds their ranks … because instead of being considered racist kooks by the majority of people, if their ideas are verified in places like Fox News or places like Breitbart, whatever the case might be, they have something to point to say I’m not extreme.” Beirich has called Fox News “the biggest mainstreamer of extremist ideas” and explained that “the horror of this is that people turn on their TV they go to cable, [they] assume this has got to be mainstream,” but “what you find is radical right ideas being pushed on Fox.”

Since white supremacists and neo-Nazis “are deeply involved in politics, [and] are a constituency that is being pandered to at the highest level of political office,” and because Fox News is elevating their movement, Beirich urges mainstream outlets to “talk about their ideas, … to talk about the domestic terrorism that’s inspired by white supremacy, and … about hate crimes.”

We always knew this was what was hiding under the right wing rock. But damn.

.

President Miller fulfilling Pope Bannon’s dreams?

by digby

Well, yes. Of course:

Congressional leaders fear President Donald Trump’s staff are exploiting the president’s busy schedule to push their own agenda and undermine his pledge to protect Dreamers.

According to four political operatives working closely with Republicans, leaders in both the House and Senate characterized some of the White House’s demands, which have yet to go public, as “poison pills,” saying they are impossible to achieve and that the White House staffers’ intent is to scuttle the deal for political gain.

The focus of their ire is on Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy adviser, who drafted the principles and has been behind several other controversial White House initiatives, including the ban on travel from several Muslim-majority nations. He is one of the few hard-right conservatives remaining in the White House after the departure of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

“We use to joke about President Bannon. Now it’s President Miller,” one senior lawmaker said in a meeting about the White House’s immigration and border security demands.

I wonder why anyone thinks Trump actually cares? He pretends to care, yes. But depending on the day he might just decide that it’s in his best interest to stick it to Latinos. It’s not like he doesn’t do it with regularity.

I hope this idea of Trump being “busy” and that he’s being manipulated by his staff to do things he doesn’t want to do doesn’t take hold. He’s got plenty of time to tweet. And if he gave a damn about DREAMers they wouldn’t be able to manipulate him. He doesn’t.

This is the Donald Trump administration and he is the president, no one else. And his people are with him.

.

Silly Wabbit tricks are for kids

by digby

Well, I guess this counts as good news:

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Saturday he told President Trump that Democrats would be open to stabilizing the health-care system, but that another push to repeal and replace ObamaCare was “off the table.”

“The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that’s off the table,” Schumer said in a statement on his call with Trump on Friday, news of which the president confirmed in a tweet.

“If he wants to work together to improve the existing health care system, we Democrats are open to his suggestions. A good place to start might be the Alexander-Murray negotiations that would stabilize the system and lower costs,” Schumer added.

A Democratic aide told The Hill in an email Saturday, “Particularly after the birth control decision yesterday, the administration has to stop sabotaging the law before anything real can happen.”

Trump tweeted Saturday morning that he had called the Democratic leader the previous day “to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill.”

“ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!” Trump added.

I guess Trump really does think Chuck was born yesterday and didn’t know that Trump had always planned to blame the failure of Obamacare on the Democrats. This is just part of his transparent ploy so he can say he tried to get them on board and they refused so it’s all their fault the whole thing fell apart.

Schumer said the right things to rebut that. But the half of the country that votes Republican and thinks, for some inexplicable reason that ensuring that people have access to affordable health care is an abomination from hell will be happy to buy this explanation, I’m sure.

I’m still waiting to see the news media catch up. So far, it’s looking like they are taking Trump at his word. Oy.

.

Rushing to judgement

by digby

Kellyanne Conway on talk of gun regulation:

“This conversation wasn’t being had until tragedies like this strike by those who try to be the loudest voices. You see Hillary Clinton talking about herself, not talking about this. You see her rushing to judgement the other day on Twitter, while people are still looking through the rubble, searching the hospital for their missing loved ones, trying to politicize it.”

 Lulz. Kellyanne going after someone else for “rushing to judgment.” We’re lucky her boss didn’t declare war …

.

Lack of planning on your part
by Tom Sullivan

Nimbleness is something one rarely encounters in Democratic establishment circles. A complaint one hears from local Democrats around the country is their county organization is calcified and resistant to change. The insiders are in control and there is no room for new activists. No matter what the challenge, once a successful pattern is established, that becomes conventional wisdom. Democrats love conventional like a comfortable, old chair. It takes a shock to reset the rules.

Obama’s data-driven field campaign from 2008, for example, was earth-shaking. So, when NC Sen. Kay Hagan ran unsuccessfully for reelection in 2014 against Thom Tillis, her campaign tried to replicate it. She was successful, other than losing. It was a solid campaign. But whatever the technical sophistication, an Obama-style campaign needs an Obama-style candidate to inspire the volunteers that make it work. Her campaign might have looked like Obama’s, but Hagan did not.

Point is, Democrats will stick with a familiar, winning formula even when it is the wrong model for the situation. I feared last fall that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency using Robby Mook’s field plan. It would then become the template for winning for decades when, from our vantage point, it was abysmal. All numbers. No heart. Volunteers here hated it. They found what they were asked to do senseless and a waste of their time. Coordinated campaign staffers here hated it through gritted teeth.

Stanley Greenberg reviewed the Clinton campaign this way:

The campaign relied far too heavily on something that campaign technicians call “data analytics.” This refers to the use of models built from a database of the country’s 200 million–voters, including turnout history and demographic and consumer information, updated daily by an automated poll asking for vote preference to project the election result. But when campaign developments overtake the model’s assumptions, you get surprised by the voters—and this happened repeatedly.

Astonishingly, the 2016 Clinton campaign conducted no state polls in the final three weeks of the general election and relied primarily on data analytics to project turnout and the state vote. They paid little attention to qualitative focus groups or feedback from the field, and their brief daily analytics poll didn’t measure which candidate was defining the election or getting people engaged.

Maybe that is just pollster Greenberg grousing about Team Clinton not using more of his services. But what really got Clinton into trouble, Greenberg believes, was not adjusting when adjustment was necessary, and her reason for it (emphasis mine):

The models from the data analytics team led by Elan Kriegel got the Iowa and Michigan primaries badly wrong, with huge consequences for the race. Why were they not then fired? Campaign manager Robbie Mook and the analytics team argued, according to Shattered, that the Sanders vote grew “organically”—turnout was unexpectedly high and new registrants broke against Clinton. Why was that a surprise?

Campaign chair John Podesta wanted to fire Mook, but Clinton stood by him. She rightly admired previous campaigns in which big data and technology were big winners, yet in 2008 it was the candidate and his appeal more than the technical wizardry that pushed Obama over the top. David Axelrod told me that analytics adds a “great field-goal kicker”—no substitute for a strategy and compelling message.

The point here is not to criticize Clinton (or Hagan), but a culture within the Democratic Party that regards veteran comrades-in-arms as the go-to advisors, a kind of priesthood, institutions, even when they lose. (Bob Shrum comes to mind.) It is a clubby culture that sticks to the familiar, shuns the new, and listens only to itself. Such a culture tends to stagnate and not grow new leaders within the ranks. There is no room for them at the top.

“I don’t get it. When a consultant on the Republican side loses, we take them out and shoot them. You guys — keep hiring them.”
— Nationally prominent Republican official

“Crashing the Gate,” by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (2006)

Martin Longman remarks on the chatter about Nancy Pelosi needing to retire for the good of the party, noting that Pelosi and Jim Clyburn are both seventy-seven-years-old. Steny Hoyer is seventy-eight. But why should she retire? he asks. “[W]hat is Pelosi doing wrong that someone younger would correct?” Where are the leaders ready to step into the shoes of a leader who has been “remarkably effective in nearly every facet of the job”? Longman writes, “If there’s a leader as capable as Pelosi on deck, show me who this person is. I don’t see them.”

Exactly. Why isn’t there?

Answer: No transition planning.

It is because Democrats love their veteran hands, and love being veteran hands more than they know when it is time to step aside to make room for fresh leadership. That is not a knock on Pelosi’s considerable skills, either. Nor is it to say there are not younger players in the Democrats’ ranks. But the party lacks dynamism. Plus, as I have written before, by the time party is ready to embrace new leaders, the party establishment — if not the nature of the business itself — has molded them into new establishment politicians. They’ve been institutionalized. Voters sense it, and they don’t want it.

The anti-establishment mood of the country favors a political product Democrats, as a party, are with rare exceptions unprepared to offer. American auto manufacturers were long content to limp along on stagnant styling, aging technology, and a comfortable model for making automobiles. Not until they faced crises did they begin to reinvent themselves. So far, Democrats have not recognized they have a crisis on their hands. It is still business as usual. Many veterans long for the days of the Big Dog. That is not the way forward.

It is common to blame the party’s losses across the country on its over-reliance on Wall Street money and lack of a populist message, and those certainly play a significant role. Certainly, in the sense among growing ranks of registered independents that there is no difference in the two major parties. But there is a structural component as well. Lack of long-term planning leaves experienced leaders in place, as a friend observes, past their expiration dates. This leaves Democrats with no one to replace Nancy Pelosi when she does retire, and with a shallow bench across the country.

Here in North Carolina, the legislative caucus has targeted a handful of districts its leaders hope to flip in 2018. For long-suffering friends in the legislature who are all but powerless, regaining power is a priority. It has to be.

But. At a conference in Durham two weeks ago, an aligned Indivisible group made its pitch for how it planned to help break the Republicans’ veto-proof majority in the NC House. Those districts would receive field assistance and money from the state caucus. Flipping three seats would give Roy Cooper, the state’s Democratic governor, the ability to stop some of the revanchist legislation that has turned the state into “a banana republic.”

When it came time for questions, a woman from Cabarrus County (east of Charlotte and not on the list) asked how that would help where she lives. Democrats are struggling out there. In the longer term, yes, it would be important to provide support to the other counties, but right now it is vital to win three of the half-dozen or so House seats (of 120) the leadership has targeted.

That is another way of saying this is the most important election of our lifetimes. As is the next one. And the next. And the next, etc.

I keep hammering on this nugget from then-Governor Mark Warner (2005):

I think the Democratic Party does more than just the party, the country a disservice if the Democrats are only competitive in 16 states and then try to hit a triple bank shot to get that 17th state.

Because even if they elect a president under that scenario, could someone really govern with that kind of mandate? I think a healthy two-party system, a place where the Democrats can be competitive in every state does – is good for the Democrats. But it’s also for the Republicans in that it would force the Republican Party more back to the center as well.

What Warner said of the country is true in the states. Democrats might muster enough votes in the cities (if a state has enough cities) to win some statewide races. But if Democrats hope to break the GOP’s control in the majority of state legislatures, both at the leadership and the grassroots level they need to start thinking more granularly. They must get beyond triple-bank-shot thinking and do some longer-term party-building and outreach in places they have long ignored. Maybe Democrats will reinvent themselves as a national party in the process.

This isn’t about sacrificing the party’s soul or its urban base or pursuing voters it can never win. But it is about the math. States legislative and congressional seats are awarded locally, not statewide. U.S. Senate seats are awarded by state, not by population. And in districts and states where Democrats simply have not competed effectively in years, or at least since Howard Dean was the national chairman.

If you don’t show up to play, you forfeit.

Election-cycle thinking and lack of transition planning are in part what led Democrats to these straits in the first place, not just in North Carolina, but across the country. The leadership’s focus is not on party-building, but on caucus building. The two are not the same. And more of the same is not the way back.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday Night Soother: some awesome wild kittehs

by digby

Unbelievable:

“Tim was awakened by noises on [his] deck last week – and looked outside. In astonishment, he grabbed his camera.. and can you believe it? Mama Lynx and her SEVEN kits!!” – he later wrote on his facebook page.

“She called to them and they all lined up right outside in front of where he was standing (he was inside the screen door!) Amazing ALASKA WILD LIFE!!! They proceeded to run and play on our deck, and then in our yard!”

“I’ve concluded that lynx must spend 1 percent of their waking lives chasing rabbits, and 99 percent chasing their kids. It was pretty much non-stop frolicking and rough-housing.”

Look at em!

.

by digby

As usual he was a liar

A federal watchdog has identified scores of cases in which the Internal Revenue Service may have targeted liberal-leaning groups for extra scrutiny based on their names or political leanings, a finding that could undermine claims that conservatives were unfairly targeted under President Barack Obama.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reviewed cases between 2004 and 2013, which includes the period TIGTA previously examined in a 2013 report that faulted the IRS for using inappropriate political criteria to select groups for heightened scrutiny.

That earlier report found that 96 groups with names referencing “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12” were selected for intensive review between May 2010 and May 2012, and the House Ways and Means Committee later identified another 152 right-leaning groups that were subjected to scrutiny. Those findings fueled accusations by Republican lawmakers that the Obama administration engaged in politically motivated targeting of conservatives.

But Democrats have long challenged those claims, arguing that liberal-leaning groups were given close scrutiny alongside the conservative groups. The 2013 TIGTA report, they argued, was based on selective criteria that omitted numerous nonconservative groups that were also subjected to close IRS review.

The new report examines a broader range of criteria used by the IRS. It does not characterize the politics of the groups that were selected for scrutiny, a TIGTA spokeswoman emphasized Wednesday. But many of the 17 criteria the report examined had obvious political overtones — including affiliation with the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), as well as names referencing “Progressive,” “Green Energy,” “Medical Marijuana,” and “Occupy.”

Together, the watchdog identified 146 cases in which the IRS examined groups for suspicion of engaging in disallowed political activity using those criteria. Eighty-three of those were definitively chosen for scrutiny because of the selection criteria, the inspector general found; the report could not definitively determine how the other cases were chosen.

The Washington Post reviewed a version of the TIGTA report dated Sept. 28 that has been circulated to various lawmakers and committees on Capitol Hill. The full report is set to be released to the public Thursday.

They tried so hard to prove that they were targeted by the jack-booted thugs for their anti-Obama views. It was always nonsense. But they spent a lot of money and time on this idiotic probe and there are people who will never believe otherwise.

The best manifestation of the delusion came from the president who once said on the trail that he too was targeted by the IRS — not for his obvious criminal tax evasion but for his strong Christian views. Lol.

.

Yes, Senator Burr, they “sowed chaos” explicitly on behalf of Donald Trump

by digby

One of the most fatuous comments by Richard Burr in his press conference the other day was his insistence that there was no evidence the Russian government acted on behalf of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. That’s ridiculous. The hacking alone is proof but the emerging evidence from the social media campaigns are even more compelling.

The only sense in which that might be true that they were seeking to sow “discord” is the fact that once they decided Trump might lose they doubled down on their efforts to delegitimize Hillary Clinton’s win in what appears to be an attempt to get right wingers to take up arms to fight her.

And, by the way, as they were doing that Trump himself as saying exactly the same things on the trail and implying that any win would be illegitimate and he would not accept it. One might even wonder if he had somehow agreed to lead the opposition movement that was building to ensure that she would be taken down by whatever means were available. (I’m reasonably sure that if she were president there would be many more congressional investigations and they would be much more aggressive.)

Think Progress has the latest and there will be more to come:

By meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Moscow appears to have initially aimed to plant Donald Trump in the White House. But as signs toward the end of the campaign pointed to Trump’s defeat, actors in Russia were primarily trying to hamstring Hillary Clinton’s perceived ascension to the presidency. That theme ThinkProgress detailed earlier this week by analyzing Russia’s creation of hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, pumped via ads and promotion into Americans’ feeds.

For part 1 of this series, click here.

We’ve also learned that certain pages called for followers to vote for Jill Steinand Bernie Sanders, as opposed to Clinton — although those posts, especially as pertaining to Sanders, haven’t yet been revealed publicly.

Both the “Secured Borders” and “Beyond Patriotic” pages revealed by the Daily Beast were steeped in anti-Clinton rhetoric, with the latter organizing on-the-ground rallies that featured Americans chanting to “lock her up!” In one example from “Secured Borders,” the authors — referring to Clinton as “Killary” — piggy-backed on the outrage over Clinton’s comments that certain Trump supporters are “deplorables.” As the post wrote, “If Killary thinks that being American, loving your country and be concerned about ours and our children’s future is deplorable, then hell yeah count me in in that basket! [sic]”

Anti-Clinton rhetoric shone through on the “Heart of Texas” page, a Russian account that advocated for Texas secession. When the page, which was the most popular Texas secession account on Facebook, wasn’t pushing to break Texas off from the rest of the U.S., it was railing against Clinton’s campaign, policies, and personality.

One post described Clinton as “pure evil,” while another shared an obviously photoshopped picture of her shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. Another post exclaimed “Hillary for prison!”, saying that Clinton “committed so many crimes that lifelong prison sentence is the least of what she deserves [sic].” All but one of these posts were published in the run-up to the election.

Perhaps the most egregious anti-Clinton material thus far identified stemmed from the “Heart of Texas” page’s attempts to rally its followers to pro-secession protests across the state in early November. The event’s promotion featured imagery of Clinton with a fly on her face and explicitly called to “Secede if Hillary!” It also referred to her as “Killary Rotten Clinton,” saying that more “refugees, more mosques, and terrorist attacks” would follow her election.

(Note that Trump also used the “Rotten Clinton” thing too — like a six year old.)

But not all anti-Clinton material was as egregious, or as obvious, as the material on the “Heart of Texas” page. To wit, the Daily Beast found that Russian agents controlled the “United Muslims of America” page — a page named after an actual, extant group. The account, along with attendant Twitter and Instagram pages, “pass[ed] along inflammatory memes” to its followers.

However, much of this material was nominally pro-Clinton, noting that she was “the only presidential candidate who refuses to ‘demonize’ Islam after the Orlando nightclub shooting.” The page even organized a “Support Hillary, Save American Muslims” march last year.

But as Dean Obeidallah wrote, the point of such a post wasn’t to buttress Clinton’s candidacy. Rather, “The Russian hackers’ goal was clearly intended to further the narrative that Trump is tough on Islam while Clinton was palling around with Muslims.”

Indeed, a Washington Post piece providing an overview of the Russian Facebook effort noted that certain ads “featured Muslims supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton for president and were targeted at Facebook users who might fear Muslims.” That is, while nominally pro-Clinton material existed on certain of these fake accounts, it was explicitly targeted at those opposed to the groups said to support Clinton.

I’ll just leave this here. It’s a real billboard in Russia: