FRESH AIR Over the past two decades, Grammy Award-winning producer Joe Henry has worked with some of the biggest artists in rock, folk, jazz, soul and alt-country. He’s collaborated with Meshell Ndegeocello, Lisa Hannigan, Madonna, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Mavis Staples, Ornette Coleman, Solomon Burke and Hugh Laurie, just to name a few. Henry is also a songwriter and solo artist. His 12th album, Reverie, features all-acoustic performances from a three-day jam session in his basement. The result is a collection of eclectic tracks, including the opening number, “Heaven’s Escape,” which, in Henry’s words, “feels orchestral, and then comes off […]
Karl Rove’s Heart Still Deceitful Above All Things
Hello, I’m Mindy Myers, Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Manager — and I’m writing you with an urgent update tonight. A few minutes ago, we learned that Crossroads GPS, the group of right-wing billionaires fronted by Karl Rove, is about to launch a wave of attack ads in Massachusetts as soon as tomorrow. They just bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV time, and you know they’ll have the money to stay on the air. We will not — and cannot — allow attacks from Scott Brown and his allies to go unanswered. We need your help to fight back. Help […]
WORTH REPEATING: See No Evil, Speak No Evil
THE NATION: I agree with the Washington Post’s Mike Wise, who wrote, “They would all be party to a worse crime than any crooked, pay-for-play booster at Miami, Ohio State or even SMU ever committed: guilty of protecting a program before a child.” But at the same time I would argue that the connective tissue between benign booster scandals and this monstrous state of affairs are more substantial than people want to admit. It’s connected to the Bowl Championship Series, “conference realignment” and all the ways in which college football has morphed over the last generation into a multibillion-dollar big […]
WHERE IS MY MIND: Rick Perry’s End Time
RELATED: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the onetime Republican front-runner who had hoped to regain traction in a candidates’ debate Wednesday, instead suffered what may have been the worst memory meltdown in the history of presidential debates. “I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone: Commerce, Education, and — what’s the third one there? Let’s see,” Perry said, struggling to remember the third federal department he repeatedly has promised on the stump to eliminate. Texas Rep. Ron Paul suggested the Environmental Protection Agency as an option. Pressed by moderator John Harwood to […]
Turns Out Paterno Can’t Quit, He’s Fired
[Artwork by JAY BEVENOUR] ASSOCIATED PRESS: Penn State trustees fired football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier amid the growing furor over how the school handled sex abuse allegations against an assistant coach. The massive shakeup Wednesday night came hours after Paterno announced that he planned to retire at the end of his 46th season. MORE NEW YORK TIMES: Penn State Coach Joe Paterno announced Wednesday that he plans to retire at the end of the football season, though it remains unclear if the university will allow him to coach that long in the wake of a sexual […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR The first birth control clinic in the United States opened in 1916. It was operated by Margaret Sanger, who started the clinic after becoming outraged that she couldn’t give her patients — poor women in the tenements on New York City’s Lower East Side — information about contraceptive options. “Sanger [went] to these squalid, crowded homes of these young women bearing many children who are begging her — while giving birth — for information about contraception,” says historian Jill Lepore. “And it [was] illegal for her to give them any information.” Lepore’s latest New Yorker piece chronicles the […]
THE BAD JOE WALSH: Religion Tea Party Politics Is The Opium Cocaine Of The MAsses
[Video: Tea Party Republican Rep. Joe Walsh held a townhall at Uno Bar and Grill in Gurnee, Illinois, over the weekend. When the topic of banks and the collapse of the economy arose, the congressman flipped out.] GAWKER: Is this the angriest interaction between a congressman and his constituents ever, or at least of the ones that have been captured on YouTube? Yes? Let’s go with “yes.” This is Illinois Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh, a.k.a. Congress’ Dad of the Year, just completely unloading on a couple of constituents at a recent town hall at an Uno pizza restaurant. The […]
DEENEY: Welcome To Coatesville Cokesville, USA
THE FIX: Coatesville has long been the primary coke supplier for Philly’s western suburbs. Local teens who move the crack bags and act as corner lookouts call their hometown “Cook Cokeville.” The town was once a major supplier of steel under the Lukens and later Bethlehem Steel banners; its mill even produced girders for the World Trade Center. The mill remains operational, owned now by Luxemburg conglomerate ArcelorMittal, and while its sprawling campus still dominates the landscape, it no longer drives the local economy as it once did. Crack cocaine replaced the steel. […] One benefit of the collapse of […]
EXIT THE FAT MAN: Heavy D Dead At 44
At the end of the Heavy D & The Boyz track “A Bunch of Niggas” — a monumental cut featuring the Notorious B.I.G., Busta Rhymes, Guru and Rob-O — Heavy defiantly declares that he won’t stop his craft until somebody says, “That nigga Heavy D was rough in his day.” Well, it’s unfortunate that his time was cut so short, but no one can say that Heavy D didn’t get his props. Mr. Big Stuff, born Dwight Myers, was a hip-hop innovator, mixed various styles and spat with the delivery of KRS-One and the lightheartedness of Posdnuos. He was an […]
PHYSICAL GRAFFITI: Roots To Get South St. Mural
[Artwork by BIGBOITHOMAS84] Yesterday Mural Arts Program directer Jane Golden announced during a morning press conference at Headhouse Square that a mural of The Roots will be going up on South Street. The exact location remains TBA (somewhere between 3rd and 6th Streets) but the mural is expected to be completed by July of next year. The artist has yet to be selected and Golden encouraged interested parties to submit a proposal. A delighted Mayor Nutter was also in attendance, calling The Roots the “best band in America, if not the world,” and noting that he listens to them every […]
Jon Stewart Uses Fresh Air‘s Dave Davies To Clarify Difference Between NPR & Conservative Talk Radio
WHYY’s Dave Davies made an unwitting cameo on The Daily Show last night in a don’t-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry segment wherein Stewart explained that the difference between National Public Radio and conservative talk radio isn’t some bogus right wing/left wing divide. One is legit news for the mild at heart. The other is a toxic distortion of reality for people with hate in their hearts. Fact. PREVIOUSLY: EXIT INTERVIEW: Dave Davies, A Reporter’s Reporter
EXIT THE LION TAMER: JoePa To Fall On Sword
NEW YORK TIMES: Joe Paterno’s tenure as coach of the Penn State football team will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks, in the wake of a sex-abuse scandal that has implicated university officials, according to two people briefed on conversations among the university’s top officials. The board of trustees has yet to determine the precise timing of Paterno’s exit, but it is clear that the man who has more victories than any other coach at college football’s top level and who made Penn State a prestigious national brand will not survive to coach another season. Discussions about how […]
TOM WAITS: Satisfied (feat. Keith Richards)
RELATED: Arriving at the Astro, Waits pulls up in a 1985 Suburban, an unlikely ride for a man known for driving cars made before Kennedy was assassinated. “I refuse to call it a Suburban – I call it a Bourbon,” he says. He’s dressed head to toe in dark blue denim, a lived-in pair of boots and his trademark porkpie hat – a rabbit-fur Stetson he bought in Austin while in town for a rare live performance at the recent South By Southwest festival. We head over to the nearby Mission Cafe, an unassuming greasy spoon, for eggs and sausage. […]