[Illustraton by AVIDOR] NEW YORKER: In 1976, like many other fundamentalist Christians, the Bachmanns supported Jimmy Carter, a born-again Baptist. The Bachmanns attended Carter’s Inauguration, in January, 1977. Later that year, they experienced a second life-altering event: they watched a series of films by the evangelist and theologian Francis Schaeffer called “How Should We Then Live?” Schaeffer, who ran a mission in the Swiss Alps known as L’Abri (“the shelter”), opposed liberal trends in theology. One of the most influential evangelical thinkers of the nineteen-seventies and early eighties, he has been credited with getting a generation of Christians involved in […]

From Ween’s Lollapalooza appearance.

NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Hatfield served in the Senate from 1967 to 1997, spending eight years as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But he came out against the war even earlier, while serving his second term as governor of Oregon. At a meeting of the National Governors Association on July 28, 1965, as his colleagues rallied behind President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Hatfield said, “I cannot support the president on what he has done so far.” He complained that Mr. Johnson’s escalation of the war had American troops taking over South Vietnam’s responsibility “to win or lose.” Citing “the deaths […]

Donn T, TLA, Saturday night by MEREDITH KLEIBER RELATED: Q&A With Black Joe Lewis

[Illustration by ZINA SAUNDERS] AMERICAN SPECTATOR: Perhaps 50 voters showed up Saturday for a campaign event held in a barn on a dirt road amid cornfields near Roland, about 20 miles north of Ames. While a few dozen voters isn’t much of a crowd by Republican presidential campaign standards, the audience inside the barn was enlarged — and enlivened — by the presence of scores of children, the offspring of several Christian homeschooling families in attendance. One family brought eight kids, another brought nine, and the hosts, Scott and Susan Hurd, have seven of their own, as did the guest […]

[Photo by DEREK BRAD] BY PELLE GUNTHER Last night at the Mann Music Center, fans swooned with the irrational, hormone-driven throws of young love over Ben Gibbard’s Seattle-based, cranium-baby Death Cab for Cutie. Over the last decade, DCFC has filled airwaves, iPods and the occasional CD player with their melancholic but hopeful melodies, endlessly creating beautiful alt-rock songs. Gibbard’s tunes never fail to blast from every girl’s speakers—mine included—from pre-tweens to soccer moms. His soothing vocal texture is made to be wrapped gently around the dulcet chords of an acoustic guitar—but as his audience grows larger (to my distaste), the […]

LEGACY.COM: A short stint with the Spokane City garbage collection squad was followed by a similarly-short hitch, ‘cold-canvassing’ for one of Spokane’s leading predatory roofing and siding contractors. That invaluable vocational experience was followed by six years employment at an industrial transformer manufacturing plant – which failed to lead to tenure, as the company moved its facility to North Carolina to take advantage of a lower-wage environment. In late 1980, Mr. Treecraft joined the Spokane Unitarian Church, whose very active singles group had a surplus of women 10 to 20 years his senior. This was truly a golden era for […]

BY MEREDITH KLEIBER Philly, it’s time to get on your good foot, because Austin’s Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears are coming to the TLA tomorrow night and bringing the party. Expect a booty-shaking onslaught of screaming horns, bump-and-grind bass, stomping beats and raw, sweaty blues-inflected rock n’ roll animated by the gravelly, soul-powered vocals of frontman Black Joe Lewis. Phawker got Joe on the phone shortly before the Honeybears’ Detroit gig last night to get the 411. PHAWKER: Why Black Joe Lewis? Isn’t calling yourself Black Joe Lewis like Eddie Vedder calling himself White Eddie Vedder or Yo Yo […]

THE ECONOMIST: In America, for example, in 1987 the top 1% of taxpayers received 12.3% of all pre-tax income. Twenty years later their share, at 23.5%, was nearly twice as large. The bottom half’s share fell from 15.6% to 12.2% over the same period. Jan Pen, a Dutch economist who died last year, came up with a striking way to picture inequality. Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending […]

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