The Growing of a Heartland Radical

by DC Larson

The last two decades were disappointing for principled progressives. But they also were educational and determinative.

Democrats abandoned progressive ideals like ceasing all executions, the ensuring of universal civil rights (including to marriage and not the separate-but-equal "civil unions"), punishment of corporate crime and the sincere pursuit of international peace.

I'd already known the conservative Republican Party was no avenue for progress and social justice; I learned the Democrats didn't want to be one, either.

I decided that I would never again support a candidate from either major party, having come to understand the problem was systemic and not merely of isolated policies.

Only two parties could not adequately reflect the diversity of legitimate political opinion in the US. Neither represented mine.

I watched as those major parties kneecapped third parties and independents, seeking to cripple upstart democratic efforts with anti-democratic legislative and legal dirty tricks.

One result of the majors ignoring citizen opinion is that the US occupation of Iraq continues, despite polls showing most Americans supporting withdrawal.

Sen. Hillary Clinton voted to grant war-making authority to the Bush White House. So did John McCain. Both they and Sen. Barack Obama have time and again voted to continue funding.

Illustrating the distance between establishment politicians's voting realities and stump rhetoric, both Clinton and Obama assure 2008 audiences that they oppose the Iraq War. (Ignore the bomb-voting Senator behind the curtain.)

It was upon identical pretending at principle the Democrat Party relied in 2004. Counterfeit progressives were abundant across the country's landscape, including here in Iowa. Their gaudy "No Blood For Oil" placards attracted cable news cameras.

But as the 2004 campaign season intensified and though the Iraq War continued, their protests ceased. Anti-war rallies were rare and sparsely attended. Many protesters lined up behind Democrat John Kerry, who had with his congressional votes helped launch the Iraq war.

And when such protesters as there were outside the national Democrat convention were arrested -- as were others at the Republican one -- papier mache progressives were not deterred from their inconsistent donkey advocacy.

I was in 2004 Iowa Coordinator for Ralph Nader's independent presidential campaign. (I'd previously volunteered for Nader in 2000 and had served as the Iowa Green Party's Media Coordinator.)

Criss-crossing the state with the ultimately successful ballot petition effort, I encountered thousands of what Nader would term, "timid liberals." I recall their personal viciousness and loud hostility at Nader campaign representatives. That campaign's genuinely progressive nature pointed up their own falseness.

"Why support Kerry?" I asked one, in Davenport.

"We've gotta get rid of Bush!" she declared. Presumably sensing the insufficiency of that response, she added, "We've gotta get the troops out of Iraq!"

I pointed out that Kerry had as a senator voted to grant Bush unilateral war-making authority, making the Iraq war possible. And that Kerry had assured attendees of the 2004 Democrat national convention that he would send thousands more into Iraq.

"Ralph Nader is the one calling for US troops to be recalled," I said.

She thought for a moment. Then exclaimed, "But, we've gotta get rid of Bush!"

I remembered those fractious months during a recent viewing of the Nader documentary, "An Unreasonable Man."

On the matter of Nader's opponents, veteran journalist James Ridgeway of the Village Voice was succinct: "Democrats are the meanest bunch of motherfuckers I've ever come across."

I reflected on the profanities screamed my way, the snarls shoved into my face and the Democrat Party-organized attempts to disrupt the 2004 Nader campaign in Iowa and other states.

Surely, at least some of the pro-Kerry "anti-war" perpetrators clung self-righteously to the standard-issue gear of the counterfeit progressive: the MoveOn.org membership, the Nation Magazine subscription, the Air America broadcast.

And most probably assured themselves that they were 'the good guys' and were open-minded supporters of democracy.

But I wasn't fooled. Their kind had helped make a progressive radical of me.



END

David Bowie "Live Santa Monica '72"

David Bowie
"Live Santa Monica '72" (Virgin)
by
DC Larson


An unexpected visitor turned up in my Monday mail.

Due for July 8 issuance (as a limited edition CD and double vinyl LP, including show photos and a related Robert Hilburn/Los Angeles Times review), this release presents David Bowie's first live US radio appearance: a broadcast of his Ziggy Stardust tour's Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show.

Bowie was never severely innovative (which would necessarily have been counterproductive to making cash registers ring out); only enough so to seem swirled when most around was vanilla. If anything, his knack was the hallowed one of the shrewd vendor, intuiting market tolerances.

More narratively ambitious and stylistically diverse works were to issue from the under-appreciated Sensational Alex Harvey Band ("Vambo," "Next," "Cheek to Cheek," "Tale of the Giant Stone-Eater," "Tomahawk Kid"). And the proposition of theatrics on the rock'n'roll stage would in short order be given the boot by the rip-and-stitch punk rock class of '77. (Though the phenomena did endure -- witness KISS and GWAR.)

Such naysaying having been committed to the page, though, there is cause to recommend this work. "Hang On To Yourself" and "Suffragette City" compel as much now as then by validating the conceit that rock'n'roll's veteran fires can indeed singe Now listeners. The songs are brash and they rocket in headlong extreme.

"Ziggy Stardust" illustrates why even preening narcissism couldn't strangle dominative riffing and the power of the bar chord. "Width of a Circle" merits notice for its wise accomodation of guitar master Mick Ronson's sparks-shooting exploits. In an extended bit of leg-stretching, he articulates intelligently and in soaring spectacle. His efforts unfurl and extend the geography of the electrified six string within the era's rock'n'roll.

It is, in point of fact, Ronson whose resources most raise these proceedings from the dustbin of pop culture history, there being no statute of limitations on unstilted instrumental fervor.

And in turn, much contributive reason for his own triumphs can be laid at the doorsteps of band mates Trevor Bolder (bass), Mick Woodmansey (drums) and Mike Garson (piano). An agile and vigorous company, they and Ronson made Bowie the affected-show biz-construct palatable to 1972 concert-goers more attuned to rocking out than posturing up.

All of which is, on reflection, quite a bit to find in the mailbox.



END

Mainstream media shutout: 'The candidates are who we say they are'
by
DC Larson

As the 2008 presidential campaign proceeds from the caucus/primary period to the general election one, independent and third party aspirants are taking the field.

Ralph Nader has already launched an independent bid. The Libertarian Party has selected former Republican Congressman Bob Barr. A one-time Democratic Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney is thought likely to capture the Green Party's nomination. Brian Moore will represent Socialist Party USA.

Other alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans include the Labor, Reform, Peace and Freedom, Constitution and US Communist Parties, all of which will soon either offer their own presidential candidates or perhaps endorse another third party's contender.

Of course, the conventional wisdom so lauded by cable news program panelists dictates that candidates from small, unorthodox parties cannot win national elections. But that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as a primary reason is the near-total invisibility of less-held political ideas in mainstream journalism.

Rank-and-file voters cannot effectively choose representation or guide the course of democratic government unless they first have been familiarized with the diverse options available.

So, we are presented with an excellent opportunity to examine the way mainstream media functions, given the responsibility it has to fully inform citizens during an election season. Does it assist or impede public knowledge and understanding of all electoral choices?

Journalistic thoroughness and impartiality are citizens's allies during this electoral decision-making process. Freedom of relevant information and honest, respectful coverage without the handicap of subjective partisan sensibilities are musts, if objective truths are to be known and processed by the voting public.

Conversely, ideologically or commercially-prompted selectivity and institutional prejudice frustrate democracy's legitimate interests.

Outright suppression of voices contradictory of (or even threatening to) an entrenched ruling elite is typically thought to be exclusive to clampdown police states. But it can be found in U.S. news media, too.

Consider the actions of major television networks and cable news channels. ABC took it upon itself to determine that anti-Iraq war Democrats Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were not deserving of televised debate inclusion. CBS and NBC followed ABC's shameful example; the public interest was overuled by corporate preference.

CNN, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel pursued similar agendas, with painfully scant coverage afforded Nader and Barr (generally framed as 'How might their candidacies impact the Democrats/Republicans,' rather than as legitimate expositions of those candidates's philosophies). And zero attention paid has been to most of the others.

(From his time as a Democratic aspirant through his move to the Libertarian Party, Mike Gravel was long a target for insipid and mean-spirited joking from cable news hosts like MSNBC's Chris Matthews. It apparently mattered not that Gravel had as a congressman been instrumental in ending the Vietnam-era draft, had pushed the Pentagon Papers into the open and was in 2007 that rarity among major-party figures: a prinicipled and free-speaking opponent of the Iraq War.)

The press practice of according sporadic, superficial and abbreviated coverage to non-mainstream candidates fulfills two objectives. Alternative figures and philosophies are represented as 'oddballs,' impractical and not worth serious attention.

Too, the supposed sufficiency of the Republican/Democrat duopoly is implicitly asserted.
Of course, third party and independent candidates may well offer fresh, superior solutions to pressing problems and speak for marginalized communities. (Besides, the major parties themselves boast a percentage of oddballs.)

Media outlets engaging in this filtering process do so in blatant contravention of genuine democratic rule. The public doesn't elect editors and reporters, has no authority over them and should not be bound by their political or professional prejudices.

Voters not familiar with alternatives to the status quo will likely either gravitate toward traditional, major party candidates or withdraw from the electoral process, entirely। And as a result, no real progress on issues of import to the public interest is achieved.

To rephrase an old philosophical query: If an alternative candidate runs in this Media Age but no one reports it, how many voters will even hear?



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NAZI ROCKERS -- FUCK OFF!
by
DC Larson

"Punk ain't no religious cult,
Punk means thinking for yourself
You ain't hardcore 'cause you spike your hair,
While a jock still lives inside your head"
- "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," Dead Kennedys, 1981

The infiltration into various 1970s/80s rockabilly and punk scenes of incongruous racist and homophobic ideologies served to despoil those interests and threatened to destroy them. And while similar noxious perspectives are in the drastic minority in current communities, that they exist to any degree is cause for concern.

In 1970s England, the punk scene was partially hijacked by the facists of that country's neo-Nazi National Front. Nazi skinheads also attached themselves to the social phenomenon that was not their own. (Effective opposition was mounted by non-racist punks and Skins.)

Similar elements plagued in 1980s California punk and international rockabilly circles.
To the extent that bigoted thinking may lurk in some quarters of the current rockabilly scene, it is not at all consistent with the subculture but flatly oppositional to its defining spirit of defiance and freedom.

Examining the meaning of rockabilly's 1950s's origin points up the style's innate foreigness from divisive hate agendas. And it underscores those philosophies's ill-fit in contemporary neo-roots musics communities.

Rock'n'roll was born from a multiplicity of racial and cultural idioms including r&b, hillbilly country, blues, bluegrass and gospel. Proudly embracing that taboo diversity, it thrust its middle finger into the aghast mug of stilted, button-down propriety. (I speak here of the raw, original item, and not subsequent, commercially-cultivated replicas.)

It acted as a socially-unifying component of the growing Civil Rights movement, and brought people together on the dance floor just as others would unite at polling places.

Not to paint too rosy a picture. It wasn't the entire solution but it did help spark the crucial process. And its service in helping to usher away racial segregation should not be forgotten.

Remember, too, that among the rhetorical brickbats hurled at the burgeoning form by Officialdom were non-veiled racial ones like "jungle music." Rock'n'Roll History Online observes that the late 50s/early 60s White Citizens Council in Birmingham decried the "race-mixing" potential of the upstart sound's "raw, savage tone."

Unfortunately, humanity being at times illogical, some golden-era rank-and-file fans probably clung to existing prejudices. And it is not impossible that this or that original rocker might have held regrettable racial views.

But the law of probability can be applied positively, too: Given numerical quality, there surely were gay 1950s rockers (even if pressures in that day precluded openness.). With increased social acceptance, gay rockers are today visible in the scene, Blues shouter Candye Kane being just one example.

Together with the booming Latino rockabilly fan base, that bespeaks increasing progress toward demographic diversity. All good news.

Still, despite manifest reasons against it, there may yet breathe some degree of intolerance in some sectors of today's rockabilly scene.

One wonders if individuals who today indulge racial and sexual bigotries -- all the while thinking themselves as "of the rockin' scene" -- understand that they are reflecting rock'n'roll's early critics, and not its true pioneers.

CMT.com recalls the 1960s touring travails faced by legendary singer Wanda Jackson, whose band included pianist/vocalist Big Al Downing. Despite sometimes hostile, racist accomodations managers, they creditably rocked on.

And one does wish people would stop adorning neo-rockabilly items with the Confederate/
Slavery South Stars and Bars -- it predated the music's birth by about 100 years, and is the natural symbol of choice of some distinctly foul and un-rock'n'roll racist interests.

"You think Swastikas look cool,
The real Nazis run your school
They're coaches, businessmen, and cops,
In a real Fourth Reich, you'll be the first to go"

The racially-segregated world longed for by the Stars and Bars Confederacy would inhibit the multi-racial development of rock'n'roll. Real rockabillies were the enemies of that order. They acted in rebellion against then-prevailing strictures.

The phenomenon of the individual daring to think for her or himself and rebelling against imposed values undergirds today's authentic rockabilly community, just as it fired the original.

By the way: The caution to exercise intellectual independence and not uncritically accept proffered viewpoints? It also applies to the piece you've just read.

end

Jim Crow Journalism:
Keeping candidates separate, making politics unequal
by
DC Larson

As noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader recently told followers there that efforts to block him and other independent and third party candidates "can only be called Jim Crow-ism against candidates."

Nader's point is a valid one. Such anti-democratic ballot bannings have as their ambitions the same broadbrush citizen disenfranchisement and stifling of difference as their race-based civil code predecessors.

But those dirty electoral endeavors have an enabling complement in what might be termed, "Jim Crow Journalism."

Jim Crow Journalism honors a similar superior/inferior standard. But it is political bigotry that manifests itself in story selection, general coverage and editorial bias. News subjects's representations hinge not upon objective significance but rather location on the subjectively supposed Jim Crow Journalism scale.

No doubt, Jim Crow Journalism has long been taught by professors who were themselves trained in it. 'Construct simple articles, A/B conflicts. Avoid nuance or complexity.' Students so schooled become the reporters and editors whose prejudices impact our own thinking. (One recalls Alexander Cockburn's deriding of contemporary journalism schools as "feedlots of mediocrity.")

It is logical, of course, to focus on the two traditional major parties when covering upper-level incumbents, as most belong to one or the other. But the practice is illogical, contrary to the ideal of reporting truths objectively and revealing of prejudice when practiced in campaign coverage.

The decorating of electoral coverage with reproductions of Thomas Nasts's elephant and donkey symbols is so common as to go unnoticed by most readers. But it necessarily restricts coverage to two sides out of many, and by so doing denies to citizen-readers full accounting.

Jim Crow Journalism relegates third party and independent electoral competitors to 'three-fifths candidates' status. What scant coverage is accorded them is generally trivial and segregated from the more frequent and comprehensive attention given major party aspirants.

One result is the disserving of both citizens and the democratic process, itself. When the electorate isn't told of all candidate options available they are implicitly instructed against considering alternatives. Subsequent ballot choices (or citizen decisions to withdraw from an unrepresentative system) are products of this reportorial malpractice.

As Iowa Green Party Media Coordinator from 2001 to the summer of 2004, and later Iowa Coordinator for Nader/Camejo 2004, I wrote many press releases and submitted them to newspapers and TV and radio stations across the state.

Though these releases detailed events we held and articulated our philosophies and views, few were used. Genuinely existing as a news protagonist, I learned, is not enough when you're on the wrong end of the Jim Crow Journalism scale.

And I experienced first hand the arrogance of the politically bigoted: Not only did releases languish unused, but one editor hung up on us, others simply regurgitated myths rather than phoning party or campaign representatives and columnists breezily passed on to their trusting readers flat untruths.

(Among Iowa media's worst offenders is the state's largest paper, the Des Moines Register. To its credit, the Register interrupted its traditional ignoring of non-orthodox political subjects to run a 2007 op-ed on ballot access I'd written. But the Register thereafter resumed discriminating against independents and Third Parties.)

Standard ethical procedure entails contacting news subjects directly and giving them the chance to confirm or deny allegations. But to the Jim Crow Journalist, political entities outside the established two-party structure do not warrant ethical treatment.

A fresh example of Jim Crow Journalistic arrogance is presently on display at WashingtonPost.com:

During a May 29 discussion, a Maine participant asked Post reporter Paul Kane, "Any chance that one of the Post's political staff might do a piece on what the Green Party, for example, is up to? (I've asked this question during six earlier Post political chats and have gotten no response, a fact I find interesting in itself.)"

As the site relates, Kane attacked with relish: "I'll happily answer this one, and I'll be brutally honest. We don't have enough resources to cover your party. It's that simple, and if that infuriates you, I'm sorry. But that's life. The Green Party and Nader got plenty of coverage in '00 when, at the least, he had the chance to play a decisive role in some states. So far, there's little indication that the Greens will have any major impact on the '08 election. Until you can demonstrate that there is some level of support for your party, our paper isn't going to spend precious resources reporting on whatever it is you're doing. I'm sorry, but we're a business...We don't have the resources to cover you guys."

Note Kane's arrogant deployment of belittling, arms-length terminology: "if that infuriates you, I'm sorry...whatever it is you're doing." His assertion that, "We don't have the resources to cover you guys" reflects Jim Crow Journalistic priorities.

Nor does he concede that most 2000 coverage of Nader and the Greens was either trivializing or hostile. And his "we're a business" defense illustrates the devolution of the journalistic ideal from noble truth-telling to superficial commercial hustling.

How much more interesting and conducive to citizen-guided government mainstream reporting could be if it asked the questions Jim Crow Journalism avoids:

* Why do many voters feel the Republican and Democratic Parties do not meet their needs?

* How many citizens who declare political independence continue to select traditional party candidates and how many choose alternatives?

* What are independent and Third Party philosophies and how do they differ from those espoused by Republicans and Democrats?

* What practical challenges do independent and Third Party candidates face in organizing and campaigning?

* What systemic barriers to free participation have elected Republicans and Democrats erected? How do they justify ensuring difficulty for citizens seeking involvement in democratic government?

Ideally, a democratic election presents a snapshot of contemporary public sentiment on political direction. But it fails to reflect that when not all legitimate parties and candidates have been fairly and respectfully presented to voting news consumers.

Like its race-based predecessor, Jim Crow Journalism corrupts democracy. And there is no reason for it, save for the cherished and traditional political bigotry of its newsroom practitioners.


END