EDITOR’S NOTE: In honor of the re-activated Replacements playing the Festival Pier on Saturday, we’re re-running Mats Week. Look for Replacements lore and legend all week on a Phawker near you! On September 5, 1981, the Replacements played a 25-song set at the Minneapolis club called the 7th Street Entry, opening for Husker Du as part of a Twin/Tone Records showcase that was recorded and videotaped. (You can watch them HERE) This show took place just a couple weeks after the Replacements released their first album, Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash. That was back when they were […]
THE BEST JUSTICE MONEY CAN’T BUY: Q&A w/ William Ciancaglini Esq., Candidate For Judge
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Attorney William Ciancaglini, aka Billy C., thinks the pay-to-play method of electing judges in this city stinks on ice. He should know, he’s an underdog candidate for Common Pleas judge. The source of that stink, he says, is the funny money you have to pay into the Dem Machine to become a judge in this city. That’s right, seats on the bench don’t go to the most qualified, they go to the highest bidder. Just to get into the game will cost you $35K, money Ciancaglini doesn’t have. Even though he’s a trial lawyer, Ciancaglini considers […]
COMMENTARY: Vive La Rapprochement!
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY After decades of steady and evermore forceful insertion, America’s resident Cuban expats and their uber-pandering Washington politicos may finally be forced to begin extracting their middle digits from between the cheeks of the 11 million-plus Cuban citizens they’ve been long-distance sodomizing for the past thirty years. And how only-slightly-better-late-than-never it is that a black lame-duck Democrat President would be the one willing to turn away from all the vote-pandering and do for the Cuban people what more than 2 million of their oh-so-more-economically-pampered and politically catered-to stateside countrymen haven’t had the magnanimity, let alone the compassion or plain old […]
COMMENTARY: In Disparity We Trust
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Guess what country you’re in: 20% of income goes to the top 1%; nearly 50% of income growth goes to the top 1%. Here’s a hint: 0.1% of the population control as much wealth as the poorest 90%. I know, you had it figured it out before you got to the semicolon. So, let me ask you this, did these little factoids at least raise an eyebrow? I admit that they may not have shocked me, but they damn sure stirred my undivided attention. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking their disclosure ought to […]
COMMENTARY: Blood And Treasure
Artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “I pledge allegiance to the arms manufacturers of the United States of America and to the stratocracy for which we yearn.” Ring any bells? It should. As I speak, Republican members of Congress are fighting tooth and nail among themselves to see how much money they can ADD to the $850+ BILLION we already spend every year on the military. So, in the midst of all this right-wing-middle-fingers-up-the-asses-of-America’s-unimaginably-dire-social-and-infrastructure-urgencies, I’m hoping you’ll agree that it might at least be prescient to expose where America currently stands in relation to the world’s other developed nations vis-à-vis unconscionable military overload. […]
FRANKLY SPEAKING: Q&A With Barney Frank
Artwork by DONKEY HOTEY BY CHRIS MCCARY Barney Frank grew up around a Jersey City truck stop, went to Harvard, and in 1981 became the first openly gay U.S. Congressmen. During his 30 year tenure in that absurd and corrupt institution Frank has been one of the loudest voices for liberal and progressive causes. In 2013, he retired from Congress and is currently working the lucrative speaker circuit. Frank will be reading from his just-published memoir FRANK: A Life In Politics From The Great Society To Same-Sex Marriage tonight at the Free Library. Last week we got the former Congressman […]
COMMENTARY: Un-American Exceptionalism
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Dear Kyle Smith: I just finished reading your recent mocking (or was it simply racist) article detailing the President’s and your, shall we say, “competing” concepts of American “exceptionalism.” Anyway, Kyle, let’s get going and see what we can do about “leveling the playing field” a bit by way of a little mockery from the “port” side of America’s great racialism divide, if you get my drift. For openers, I feel compelled to inform you that in addition to reading your article, I also boned up on your schooling, and right off the bat I’m very concerned […]
COMMENTARY: Bibi’s Got A Boehner
Illustration by DONKEY HOTEY BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Having accepted “Rabbi” John Boehner’s invitation, Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli “state’s” senior Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, né Prime Minister of Israel) has decided to stand by his scheduled address to the huddled faithful on March 3rd. So, aside from the fact that said speech is opposed by many top-level Israelis both here and in Israel as well as by the President of the United States, what’s really wrong with his giving it? Allow me to count the ways: 1) John Boehner isn’t tasked with initiating or carrying out the foreign policy of the United States, the President is; 2) it […]
INCOMING: Let The Wild Rumpus Begin!
CNN: Philadelphia will host the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, a source with knowledge of the selection process tells CNN. The Democratic National Committee confirmed Philadelphia’s selection Thursday morning, shortly after the news broke, using a Facebook video of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz pulling a cheesesteak out of a refrigerator to announce the decision. New York and Columbus, Ohio, were the two other cities vying for the right to host the Democratic convention. The event is scheduled for the week of July 25, 2016. Democrats’ decision to nominate the party’s presidential nominee in Philadelphia is a major win for […]
COMMENTARY: Class War Is Over If You Want It
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “If there’s a way for the super-rich to screw the middle and lower classes, they will find it.” So sayeth Uncle Bill Henry. Yes, but WHY do they do it, Uncle Bill? Well, according to this no doubt intellectually overrated but nonetheless venerated old fart, they do it because they can, and perhaps to a greater extent, because they can’t help it. You see, it’s extremely difficult — if not downright impossible — to have amassed extraordinary wealth in these or any other times without having inherited the sociopathy and cupidity genes (or, of course, without […]
SMUS: The Biggest Balls Of Them All!
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I’m definitely siding with New England on this one if for no other reason than the very idea of “deflategate” is utterly stupid and outlandishly hypocritical on its face. In fact, should it turn out that the Patriots were in fact complicit, I’d support a celebratory toast to them with cups of heavily spiked Orange Pekoe! Why? Because EVERY team in the NFL CHEATS, and they do it in EVERY game they play, and contrary to this preposterous “deflategate” bullshit, that kind of CHEATING actually HAS a bearing on the outcome of games! Huh?, you […]
ANGELS OF MONTGOMERY: Ghosts Of The Dream
NEW YORKER: Barry Blitt drew this week’s cover, inspired by the photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march that are everywhere again. “It struck me that King’s vision was both the empowerment of African-Americans, the insistence on civil rights, but also the reconciliation of people who seemed so hard to reconcile,” he said. “In New York and elsewhere, the tension between the police and the policed is at the center of things. Like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, Martin Luther King was taken way too early. It is hard to believe things would […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Cracks In The Wailing Wall
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Two weeks ago, the U.N. Security Council voted down a Palestinian resolution granting it statehood status. Somewhat remarkably, the resolution was only one vote short of the nine required for passage. Guess who voted against it? “We voted against this resolution not because we are comfortable with the status quo,” said UN Ambassador Samantha Power. “We voted against it because … peace must come from hard compromises that occur at the negotiating table.” And thus did a dehumanized Palestinian mission once again take it up the ass from us and the rest of our ilk at the United Nations. […]