Tying in nicely to Jacob’s most recent post..

here we have Der Furher coming face to face with a personal housing apocalypse..

November 2007 saw the release of the film What Would Jesus Buy? which satirically focused on the commercialization of Christmas and materialism at large. The film stars activist/performance artist Bill Talen, who goes by the alias of “Reverend Billy,” and his troupe of activists, whose street theater performances take the form of a church choir called “The Church of Stop Shopping,” that sings anti-shopping and anti-corporate songs. The film follows Billy and his choir as they take a cross-country trip in the month prior to Christmas 2005, and spread their message against what they perceive as the evils of patronizing the retail outlets of several different large corporate chains.

This interview is from last year as well. As you can tell with the host, the notion that we’re bringing “the end of the world from shopping” was taken more or less a bit amusingly. Well flash forward to this year, where we now face in front of us the biggest economic downturn in half a century, in part due to a credit crisis spurred by consumers buying all kinds of crap they couldn’t afford, and this all isn’t so funny and quaint anymore. Retailers this holiday season may indeed go through a Shopocalypse where we actually don’t buy so much stuff.

When you consider that roughly 25% of our annual spending, garbage and ecological impact occurs between Thanksgiving and New Years, maybe belt tightening this year isn’t such a bad thing. The concept of “living within your means” may no longer seem so foreign to us Americans.

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still

For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

(from Pablo Neruda..”Extravagaria”).

There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book. 

And it’s even transferred up to our leaders.  

The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. 

So we’ve gone from 12th grade language level down to 7th grade language level from our President’s.  Ouch.  But what does language level actually measure?  Hedges:

It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.

Was “serious artistic expression” ever not on the margins of American society?  I’m pretty sure the Jack Kerouac never had a teevee show.  There is an inherent “outsiderness” of artistic expression that needs some sort of agreed upon medium to foil against.  

But what I think Hedges is getting at is that our country’s heavy move into a post-modern culture has made us retarded.  It’s not specifically that we can’t read, it’s more about the dumbing down of society to a point where we are too stupid to know facts from lies.

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying. Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us. 

Sometimes I think Hedges is stuck in 2004 when the we believed the lies of Iraq, thought torture was okay, and that the Christian Right was going to to create a religious state.  We just had an election where Ideas won out over Lies.  It seems like we have at least pointed the ship in the right direction now.  Time will tell though.

strange but very cool stuff from Mel Torme..1963..

inspired by Warm Jets post of ..Nancy Sinatra’s version of “Bang Bang”..
on the Cabinessence blog..
.
it reminded me what an awkward time this was for the Pop oligarchy at that point..

the Beatles had killed em..Dylan was going ape shit.. the Brits were almost single handedly resurrecting Blues..and .psychedelic..”rock” was just a rumour..

Good artists like Mel didn’t know if “they wanted to be Matt Dillon..or Bob Dylan.”.

He decided to rock..

I hear a whole lot of Ray Charles in this one..

I like it.

Sad news… Mitch Mitchell passed away earlier today in Portland. He was drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, you may have heard of them.

My whole love affair with music basically started with this band and their albums. What a gift he left behind… still unsurpassed in terms of impact and longevity.

Tonight at 9pm on Frontline:

In the wake of yet another hard-fought and bitter presidential campaign, FRONTLINE presents a spirited and revealing biography of Lee Atwater, the charming, Machiavellian godfather of modern take-no-prisoners Republican political campaigns. Through eye-opening interviews with Atwater’s closest friends and adversaries, the film explores the life of the controversial political operative who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush, led the GOP to historic victories, and wrote the party’s winning playbook. The story tracks Atwater’s rise from his beginnings in South Carolina as a high school election kingmaker all the way to the White House and his subsequent battle with cancer and final search for forgiveness and redemption. To Democrats, Atwater was a political assassin who one Congresswoman dubbed “the most evil man in America,” but to Republicans he remains a hero for his deep understanding of the American voter and his unapologetic vision of politics as warfare.

Easily one of my favorite artists..stumbled across hid 2nd LP..”Jamu Dreaming”..in the mid nineties and have never looked back..

A powerful singer songwriter..spokesman for his Australian Aboriginal people..his songs have helped crystallize conciousness and awareness for so many Australians..black and white.

This particular song is from “Looking for Butterboy”..which features a duet with his partner..Ruby Hunter..herself an incredible singer with a Jimmy Scott range of octaves and notes.

There’s not a whole lot on the youtube of Archie..but also check the “Jamu Dreaming” video…chilling and powerful music.

With a soberer celebratory spirit, Fire On Fire bestows upon thee a back porch performance… with lightening!

Their bio says they come from Maine, live together in a big blue house, and play simply for the enjoyment of playing. Makes sense to me.

Described by Michael Gira as “a backwoods, fierce, psychedelic Mamas And The Papas or a crazed and joyously vengeful gospel string band.”

Either way… whatever it is they’re doing, I’m finding it plenty infectious.