PITCHFORK: Moe Tucker: pioneering self-taught drummer for the Velvet Underground, Tea Party supporter. Tis true. The 66-year-old Georgia resident was apparently interviewed at a rally for the controversial conservative offshoot party last April, and you can watch the news report below (fast forward to the 2:40 mark if you dare). MORE RELATED: In the mid-sixties, Long Island native Maureen “Moe” Tucker replaced Angus MacLise as the drummer in the fledgling Velvet Underground. With a beat-up four-piece drum kit and minimalist aesthetic, Moe brought an important like-mindedness to the VU. She shared, among other things, a disdain for hippiedom and a […]
GAMBLOR: We Are Coming To Get You
SUGARHOUSE CASINO: Catch a FREE ride on the Sugar Express! Starting October 2010, our official transportation, the Sugar Express will pick up and drop off SugarHouse guests around Center City and nearby access points. MORE PHAWKER: Why does this remind us of the story of Hansel and Gretel?
WITCHY: Christine O’Donnell ‘Dabbled In Witchcraft’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Another unfavorable decade-old television clip of tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell has emerged, this time with the Delaware GOP Senate candidate saying she “dabbled in witchcraft.” The clip spread among websites as O’Donnell canceled appearances Sunday on two national news shows. Her campaign said she had to back out of the programs because of scheduling conflicts with events in Delaware. Since O’Donnell’s upset of nine-term Rep. Mike Castle, opponents have unearthed unflattering age-old television clips. The most recent was aired by comedian Bill Maher, who dug up one of O’Donnell’s appearances on his “Politically Incorrect” show in 1999. […]
New York Times Reviews Will Bunch’s Backlash
NEW YORK TIMES: By far the most compelling, if not terribly original, arguments in “The Backlash” concern the current media environment, which has amplified the loudest and most partisan voices, and helped spread fact-free theories about President Obama’s not being born in the United States or wanting to take away people’s guns. Mr. Bunch invokes Neil Postman — who argued in his seminal 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” that the entertainment values promoted by television are subverting public discourse — to explore the phenomenon of Mr. Beck and his shameless emotional appeals to his audience’s deepest fears about change […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR “[Jimmie Dale Gilmore‘s] voice would make even Hank Williams cry,” Nicholas Dawidoff once wrote in The New York Times Magazine. Gilmore, a singer from West Texas, writes songs that would be described as alternative country. But he sings honky-tonk country classics on his album Come on Back , which he discussed in a 2005 interview with Terry Gross. The album, a tribute to Gilmore’s late father, contains versions of his father’s favorite songs like “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” and “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.” “[Pick Me Up] represents an entire style that I really associate […]
Stoking White Fright For Fun And For Profit
GLENN GREENWALD: Virtually every Fox News/right-wing-talk-radio controversy relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity — plundering by Wall Street bankers, abetted by the government they own — and focusing instead on some manufactured menace from powerless racial and ethnic minorities: black people preventing them from voting (New Black Panthers), stealing their elections (ACORN), and treating them unequally (Shirley Sherrod and Eric Holder’s Justice Department); Muslims who want to conquer their country and celebrate over their Christian corpses (the Triumphalist Ground Zero Mosque); invading, marauding Latino armies coming to steal their property and rape […]
GLENN BECK: ‘It’s Like The Damn Planet Of The Apes‘
WASHINGTON POST: It’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show. Yet Williams isn’t the only apparently disturbed character with a seeming affinity for the Fox News host. In April 2009, a man armed with an AK-47, a .22 rifle, and a handgun killed three cops in Pittsburgh. The Anti-Defamation League reported that the accused killer had, as part of a pattern of activities involving far-right conspiracy theories, posted a link on a neo-Nazi website to a video of Beck talking about the possibility that FEMA was operating concentration camps in Wyoming. The killings […]
TEABAGGERY: Neocon Cyber Coven Has Been Secretly Censoring Digg For Right Wing Purity Since 2009
ALTERNET: A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year. Digg.com is the powerhouse of social media websites. It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site. It reached one million users in 2007 and likely has more than tripled that by this point. Digg […]
SCRAPPLE TV: Getting Lit With AP Ticker
New feature: AP Ticker does dramatic readings of song lyrics. We start off with Public Enemy’s “The Enemy Battle Hymn Of The Public.”
Breitbart Brings Tea Party Minstrel Show To Town
[Click image to enlarge] PHILLY IMC: Andrew Breitbart said he wanted to discredit the NAACP’s claims of racism within the Tea Party campaigns. So he smeared a black woman to do it. Tea Partiers coming to Independence Hall on July 31 want to show that the NAACP is wrong about the racism within their campaigns. And they have invited Andrew Breitbart to speak. The Tea Party Federation is the organization that ousted a racist from their ranks last week after a racist mock letter to Abraham Lincoln. They are also the organization that is sponsoring what they have called a […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: With AP Ticker
AP says ‘good riddance’ to the Ducks, the Gulf spill and Mel G. Plus, the auspicious debut of our new sportscaster, Hot Carl!
THE HARSHEST MELLOW: New Jersey’s Medical Marijuana Law Will Be The Strictest In The Land — Assuming It Ever Actually Goes Into Effect
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY Of all the shitty ways to die, ALS is arguably the shittiest. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and in short it is slow death brought on by the steady and methodical withering of the nerves that control your muscles. First, you can’t button your shirt. Then, you can’t walk and eventually, you can’t breathe. The cruelest irony is that the disease does not affect higher brain function, and so even at the very end, you are a fully present mind trapped in […]
SCRAPPLE TV NEWS: Life Lessons
AP on the beauty of the sexy beast within. He is man, hear him roar.