Artwork via DRIFTGLASS DAVID BROOKS: For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships. […] But then we all sort of moved away from it.most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn’t really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this). We graduated to more […]
MEDIA: The Least Trusted Name In News
Psyched to see our former colleague and Scrapple News anchorman AP Ticker, aka Frank Baker, on the cover of PW this week. AP Ticker is, among other things, The Second Most Interesting Man In The World (after the Dos Equis guy). PW: Sounds like Ticker is quite the unsung pioneer of television news. “He actually coined the phrase, ‘We’ll be right back,’” continues Baker. “Until then, it had been very awkward for anchormen. Because they would say, ‘We’re going to be here, but we’re going to a commercial now, but we’re not actually going to leave.’ It was very long. […]
THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS: Q&A With Erik Prince, Founder & Former CEO Of Blackwater
Illustration by ALEX FINE BY JONATHAN VALANIA Blackwater founder Erik Prince will be speaking at the Free Library on Friday to promote his new book, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story Of Blackwater & The Unsung Heroes Of The War On Terror, his compelling counter-narrative about the rise and fall of Blackwater. Not surprisingly, in Prince’s telling Blackwater is essentially blameless for any and all murder and mayhem that has occurred on its watch. Yesterday we got Prince on the phone and asked who, in the final accounting, will have to answer for all that murder and mayhem. Turns out nobody […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Lucifer Rising
Illustration by MARIO PIPERNI BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz returned to Texas recently to pick up a clean white sheet and rummage for more dry timbers and kerosene. Having been run out of Washington with pointed hat in hand, it must have felt especially good to be welcomed home by some 600 of his crimson-naped faithful all decked out in their finest Sunday-go-to-meeting stars and bars. Okay, I’ll come clean. I detest Ted Cruz, just as I detest all political deceivers, thieves, racists, bigots, hypocrites and phonies. But because Cruz has earned himself such a special […]
ASK A WIZARD: Backstage w/ Wayne Coyne
In conjunction Scrapple TV, our partner in New Media crime, Phawker sat down with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne on his tour bus a few hours before their performance at the Festival Pier last month and rolled film. DISCUSSED: Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, why the new Lips album is so goddamned dark, why he has Nick Cave’s blood, the story behind the Wayne Coyne Hand Grenade Incident, how he got Erykah Badu naked and covered in cum and glitter, and if he wasn’t the lead singer of the Flaming Lips what would have he done with his life. The […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Forget Edward Snowden, The Real Traitors Are In Corporate Boardrooms
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Corporate mogul with a tax law you don’t like? Not to worry. What has been labeled the “holy grail of tax dodges” is at hand — and this one’s guaranteed to tickle the imagination of even the most quintessential corporate welfare queen. Here’s how it works: 1) Pump a hefty portion of that tax money you’re so otherwise reluctant to part with into the tanks of the corporate jet and take off in search of an overseas patsy on whom to lavish some more of it convincing him to sacrifice his corporation to the greater […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The National Debt Lie And The Lamestream Media That Makes It All Possible
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “We must slash entitlement programs in order to reduce the national debt and restore fiscal sanity to the budget process.” Where have we heard that before? Well, no matter how often or how loudly the right wing regurgitates it, it will still be the same excremental lie it has always been. And, yes, you can indeed thank America’s mainstream media, those constitutionally vested stewards of liberty, those incorruptible, inextinguishable lodestars of enlightenment whose number one reason for being is to expose lies and disseminate truth to the American people, for perpetuating the deceit. Alas, with […]
BANKSY: Syrian Rebels Shoot Down Dumbo
NEW YORK TIMES: The British street artist Banksy is apparently among the millions watching Syria’s war from afar, through glimpses of the fighting recorded on video and posted on YouTube. His latest video work is a brief parody of one of those clips released on Sunday as part of a series of works produced during a monthlong residency in New York that started last week. An excerpt from the video, showing actors dressed like Syrian rebels aiming a shoulder-fired missile at the sky, was uploaded to that Instagram account on Sunday, with a note reading: “I’m not posting any pictures […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: The Day Democracy Died
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY So it will be if the President and the Senate capitulate to the right wing Republican terrorists holding the House of Representatives hostage in their crusade to destroy the current American Presidency. Never before in our history has a radical political faction shown itself to be more gutless, duplicitous or traitorous. Let me repeat that: Never before in our history has the nation and its Presidency been forced to endure a more cowardly, deceitful or subversive reactionary political coterie. Or a more racist one. Period. Exaggerated? Hardly. What we are witnessing is an attempt by […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Real Reason Why The Affordable Care Act Scares The Tea Party Shitless
WBUR: Of course, there are ways to eliminate a law you don’t like in this country. You can gather the votes to repeal it, for instance, or challenge it in court. Conservatives have failed at both approaches. So they are now in the “shut down the government” phase. If you’re like Ted Cruz, someone whose credibility depends on vilifying this law, the signs are not good. If you step back from the situation for a sec, it’s a pretty brazen precedent. What’s next on the conservative repeal-or-we’ll-shut-the-government-down list: the New Deal? Civil Rights? Freeing the slaves? But here’s the thing […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: “A Nation Of Sheep Begets A Government Of Wolves.” — Edward R. Murrow
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY This past May an American patriot by the name of Edward Snowden presented the mainstream media with one of the most startling exposés of government betrayal in our nation’s history. Since that time said Fourth Estate have shown themselves to be some of the most complacent, intimidated and/or ungrateful blockbuster news recipients in the annals of American journalism. So, the question becomes: just whose freedom are America’s vaunted “free press” protecting these days, theirs, ours or the federal government’s? We’ve read and heard reports about unconscionable domestic spying, but where’s the mainstream media’s unyielding denunciation […]
BEING THERE: Hillary, Now More Than Ever
Photo by RORY MCGLASSON BY AMY Z. QUINN For the record: At no time during Tuesday night’s Liberty Medal festivities did Hillary Clinton announce, or even mention, running for or even wanting to be president. Actually, there was no need, since longtime pals and political boosters Mayor Michael Nutter and Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania and honorary rich white dude, did plenty of that for her. Even Jeb Bush, son of current Bill Clinton BFF George H.W. Bush, said he figured Hillary was headed for Des Moines next week. For her part, Clinton was doing that “I’m […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Boehner Kill
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Question: How can you tell if the Speaker of the House is speaking the truth about America’s fiscal situation? Answer: His mouth is closed. Recently, the House of Representatives’ head cockroach hissed that without significant cuts to entitlement programs, negotiations on increasing the debt limit will go nowhere. Although typical of Boehner’s callous, intransigent, extortion-centered, wealthfare approach to governing, John-Boy’s latest nugatory jaunt into the wasteland of Republican recourse is far more enlightening for what it doesn’t say than for what it does. To wit, here’s a partial listing of truly deserving chopping block candidates […]