Liberal Media Elite

On December 28th, 2006 a gentleman named Dinerral Shavers was gunned down while driving with his family in New Orleans. He was just one of many who has died in the escalating violence of New Orleans.

I came to know of Mr. Shavers through Jazz Fest Live. He was the snare drummer for a rippin’ good band, the Hot 8 Brass Band. As a post-Katrina survivor looking for work, Mr. Shavers signed on as a substitute French teacher at New Orleans’ Rabouin High School. He immediately went to work on the school’s principal, to allow him to form and direct a marching band, something the school had never had. Dinneral made the case that being part of a band, the celebration and the discipline, would have a powerful positive impact on kids, particularly troubled kids. Kevin George, the principal, resisted but Shavers’ daily hounding wore him down. Eventually Shavers formed a marching band, majorettes, and a dance team. According to Mr. George, “Kids that we had serious problems with, after they had band, I saw a total change in them.”

His band, Hot 8 has been on the road constantly since Katrina bringing a positive message about the city through its music. They took a break from touring to help carry on Mr. Shavers’ legacy by assisting in getting instruments for the band and helping direct the kids (a task largely taken on by the director and assistant director of a rival high school).

Yesterday the young man arrested for Mr. Shavers murder had his case dismissed. Police had viewed this case a slam dunk, with the theory being that the young man was aiming for Mr. Shavers teenage stepson as part of a gang turf war. The case fell apart when a key witness, a 15 year old girl, refused to testify against the accused killer.

I don’t know why she’s opted not to testify. I don’t care if the reason is good or bad. What I do know is it would be truly tragic if the dissolution of this case somehow came to overshadow the incredible work and influence Dinerral Shavers had on kids desparately needing a positive role model.

For more information go to www.hot8brassband.com

The Boy Who Would Be King saw his last hope at legacy making domestic legislation take a header with the demise of his immigration bill.

Set aside for a moment whether it was a good bill or a bad bill. In terms of big domestic legislation, in terms of a domestic anything of any sizeable nature, The Bubble Boy just saw his last shot at any kind of lasting domestic impact go to shit. Yeah, he did the Supreme Court up…but I’m talking about big-time legislation.

Not since Warren G. Harding has a President been so very ineffective at passing anything domestic he gave a damn about.

I’ll forgo my lobbying for Worst President Ever. It’s subjective. But…I’m feeling good about Least Effective President Ever.

Leave it to Katherine Kersten to make a string of back-handed insults the most boring thing I’ve ever read.

The Strib pays for that?!? Mama Cass jokes? Equating liberals with dogs? That only Kersten’s ideas are human and that anyone who takes pleasure is… Aw, hell, never mind. Kersten can’t write forty words without insulting the intelligence and lives of half the U.S. population. But, gosh, she’s just so plucky and honest and virtuous. Except for all the arrogant contempt. But that, apparently, is a virtue, too.

Conservatives, please stop trying to be funny, charming, clever, witty, etc. Elizabeth Edwards is so absolutely right: Trying to shine a light on your joyful hearts only reveals how black and empty they are.

Rupert Murdoch has come one step closer to owning the Wall Street Journal.

The nitty gritty from the WaPo…

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Dow Jones & Co. today have agreed in principle to editorial protections for the latter’s Wall Street Journal, taking Murdoch one step closer to owning the company and its marquee newspaper.

The outline of a proposed editorial board — that would mediate differences between the Journal’s owner and editors and have the power to approve the hiring and firing of some editors — has been sent to the Bancrofts, Dow Jones’s controlling owners, for their approval, according to sources close to the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks are ongoing.

The editorial board would oversee the appointment of the Journal’s managing editor and editorial page editor and have a say in the hiring of the editor of the Dow Jones Newswires, as well, the sources said.

The money shot that gives the lie to the whole exercise is at the tail end of the first paragraph…”owning the company and its marquee newspaper”.

Look, it isn’t that I give a shit about the WSJ. I don’t. I rarely read it. I know now that I’m a big business geek again that I’m supposed to but the news coverage is so stuffy and the editorials are so ridiculous that I’d rather shove a knitting needle in my eye than be forced to read the rag.

It’s the stupidity of the current owners that has me worked up.

Murdoch showed up on May 1st with an usolicited $5 Billion offer to buy the WSJ. Okay…all of Dow Jones but he’s really after the Journal. The Journal is worth about $4.98 billion and all the rest of Dow Jones Inc about 200k. That’s alot of damn money. If I’m the Bancrofts it sure as hell gets my attention. $5 Billion damn dollars! All was happy in the Hamptons.

And then someone had a thought that rippled through the polo field like a big ol’ cow patty plopped in the middle of the pristine lawn…Murdoch would own Dow Jones and the Journal. He might use them to advance his political and business goals and not treat the Journal as the gem of journalistic pulchritude that it is. The conversation went something like this…

Kip: Muffy…that Murdoch fellow could use the Journal as a tool for blatant political shilling
Muffy: We shan’t let him, shall we Kip?
Kip: Well…$5 Billion is a lot of dollars…even to us.
Muffy: I know Kip. I know. Whatever shall we do? Shall we forgo the chance to be even richer or shall we take the money and watch the shrine that is the Journal crumble?
Kip: I have an idea…maybe we can get the dollars and keep that meddling Murdoch from damaging our paper.

And apparently Kip convinced the Bancrofts that they could have it both ways. And obviously the Bancroft family is naive enough to think that it can contractually obligate a privately held company to behave in a certain way.

Apparently, the people who own the Journal need a quick lesson in the property rights their paper so endlessly champions. Murdoch would own it. Find me, I dare you, a single case in which past owners were able to force the entity they sold to to behave in a certain way. They can’t. ‘Cause they used to own it. But they don’t own it any more. So, they aren’t, you know, relevant. More important, they don’t have any ownership rights.

Let’s see…what do we think the chances are that Rupert Murdoch would find a way to break any obligations if he saw a boatload of money in doing so?…hmmm…I wonder…

For that reason, let me pass on the following urgent message to the Bancrofts…

You’re fucking high! You’re smoking your Golf Digests! You’ve spent too much time in the Hamptons with Muffy and Kip! There is one and only one way to keep Rupert Murdoch from fucking with your paper. Don’t sell it to him. That’s it. That’s all you got. That’s your entire choice set right damn there, y’all. Don’t sell it to him, he can’t fuck with it. Sell it to him, and he can…’cause it’s his. And not yours. You fucking simpletons.

Thank you. You may now go back to your regular programming.

Oh those Europeans. Love them! They can squabble about almost anything. Such as Vodka

In front of a table laden with regiments of shot glasses, a queue of MEPs, parliament staffers and hangers-on forms and snakes around the room.

Glasses are filled and emptied in quick succession. The volume of conversation rises. Polish sausage and brown bread are on offer to soak up the alcohol.

The vodka being dispensed is made exclusively from potatoes or grain.

The Poles would like that definition to apply to everything sold as vodka across the EU. They are open to persuasion on sugar beet, but nothing else.

And they are not alone.

The Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - along with Finland, Denmark and Sweden are also backing efforts to tighten the legal definition in the EU’s spirits regulation, being voted on in the European Parliament on Tuesday.

Personally I like the idea. Granted I’m a fan of the Rheinheitsgebot and would like to see the label “Beer” reserved only for beverages containing water, hops, yeast and malted barley or wheat. But it appears the “beer belt” hasn’t yet found their way with appellation controlee

“This is a battle of the vodka belt against the wine belt,” says Finnish MEP Lasse Lehtinen. “In between lies the beer belt, which will get to decide.”

mmmmmm. Beer Belt.

(PHIL is visiting the AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT with his nine-year-old Aussie nephew CALEB. They enter the GREAT HALL. It is an impressive sight. The two of them pause for a few moments to take it in.)

CALEB: Oy! I wish I had a basketball right now!
PHIL: (nodding sagely) Spoken like a true American, Caleb.

—

There’s a famous quote by the late Dr. Kinsey in which he wonders what America would have been like if it had been settled by criminals and hedonists, rather than religious fanatics, the implication being that a much more liberated society would have formed. He needed look no further than Australia, to see his thesis proved both right and wrong. They’re a lot like Americans, only without that wonky puritanical streak.

—

Visited the Aussie House of Parliament, and got separated from the others no less than twice, because I had to spend just a little more time with their copy of the Magna Carta — dating from 1299, when Edward I signed and distributed several copies, only four of which are still in existence.

Its easy to romanticize the document, regarding it as a triumph of the people over their monarch, when in reality it had a lot more to do with one small gang of thugs stealing power from the king for themselves. But still, it articulated a set of ideas and started a dialogue that was later picked up by figures like Richard Overton and Oliver Cromwell, Adam Smith and John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and that’s still going on today. It’s hard to stand in the presence of that and not be sort of startled by it.

And, y’know, I never thought the day would come when I was waxing nostalgic for the right of Habeas Corpus. So there’s that.

—

Travelling with my father means listening to lots of arguments championing the cause of socialism, and that means necessary recourse to copious amounts of alcohol. This has led me to three observations:

1) Hard as it may be to believe that an advertising campaign has lied to me, Foster’s is something of a joke here.

2) Observed several signs indicating “WARNING: THE SERVING OF ALCOHOL TO SOMEONE WHO IS INTOXICATED IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE.” Where the hell is the fun in that? This is one of those laws that I assume isn’t really enforced. I can’t imagine what watering hole *could* enforce it and still stay in business.

3) Guinness is me brand, and it’s so hard to find here it’s ridiculous. Finally hit up a bar towards the end of the trip that had it on tap, and, mmmmm, there it is, that dark, creamy liquid flowing down my throat, black as the devil and cold as hell — how could anyone have ever made this shit illegal? If heaven doesn’t have a keg, I ain’t interested.

I’ve been buried with the new job for the last three or four weeks. Haven’t posted much if anything during that time and haven’t really read anything but the sports page (and that only twice). So, before blowing part of Saturday working I took a quick spin around the news. Here’s what I’ve learned…

Did I miss anything? Anything at all? Something?

Oh, right.

Paris-fuckin’-Hilton.

I put that MSNBC Breaking News thingie in my personalized Google start page months ago in case I miss the next terror attack. It has been empty ever since, assuring me constantly that there are “currently no breaking news”. Until today. Sigh.

The Consulate General of Canada Minneapolis / Consulat général du Canada à Minneapolis has a very handy list of Canadian artists performing in the Minneapolis region (by “Minneapolis region,” they mean anywhere in Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa or the Dakotas).

Because it runs the gamut from k.d. lang to the Tragically Hip (good, good) to Nickelback and Rush (barf, ick, deport! deport! deport!), it’s best not to get ridiculously excited, no matter how severe a case of Maple Leaf Fever you have—and mine’s pretty bad. Still, it’s nice to know that our neighbors actually give a damn about their arts. It’s hard to imagine the Bush administration plugging one of my shows on an American consulate Web page. And I’m not sayin’ I don’t still think Harper’s a dick.