There are love letters to a band and to a musical movement and then there is Steven Hyden’s Long Road:Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation, one of the most entertaining summations of what a rock band can do to one’s soul whether we like to admit it or not. Hyden is a music journalist and author I have gotten to know from a distance since he kindly referenced my Accidentally Like a Martyr – The Tortured Art of Warren Zevon a few years back. Previously commenting poignantly with some humor in compendiums on the music of his times, Your Favorite Band is Killing Me (2016) and Twilight of the Gods (2018), and an in-depth analysis of Radio Head’s Kid A in This Isn’t Happening (2020), this time Hyden is fully immersed in his subject.
Setting the arc and journey of Pearl Jam into seminal eras, which begins for Hyden at a June 1995 Red Rocks concert wherein the band rediscovers and reinvents itself, the book helps fans to understand how the inner workings of this collection of musicians have endured beyond the grunge movement. (The only one that has?) This includes the infamous battle with Ticketmaster that, in Hyden’s estimation, both underlined the integrity of the band while simultaneously derailing its ascent. For this reviewer, who had more or less left Pearl Jam’s evolution somewhere along 1998’s Yield, Long Run, made it fun to discover gems from their later works while marveling at the band’s survival instincts to navigate several personal and professional travails most fans never see.
Hyden also uses a similar ‘songs as guideposts’ framework that I used in Accidentally to focus on where the band was in its steady – if not enigmatic – sonic pilgrimage, ending prophetically on “Yellow Leadbetter,” a reliable concert closer that is perhaps its fans most beloved song. In the final chapter, wherein he muses on the emotional connection a band’s run has on our fraying thread of memories, Hyden writes, “You see a band you have loved most of your life, and if they can still move you, then time manages to stand still. But only for a while. And only if they can still do this. Because one day, they won’t.”
RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT & The Consequence of Chucking Civil Rights on a Lark
In an age of abject polarization and moronic social issue wrangling, a congressional bipartisan bill to protect the sanctity and legality of marriage equality provided by the landmark 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that passed through the Senate and will duly be signed into law by the president of the United States is a major deal. At the very least, the law will act as an important bulwark against the radical right-wing fascist current Court, which, according to its goose-stepping ringleader Clarence Thomas, will most assuredly overturn that 2015 decision as blithely as he engineered the dismantling of Roe v Wade, stripping a half-century of settled law that protected women’s reproductive rights from the tyranny of government oppression.
Hooray.
All of this is a good thing. Sure. But is sad and pathetic for a country to have to go to such legal steps to avoid falling backwards, halting its natural progression of moving beyond the iron fist of ignorance and petty political gamesmanship. Its very need to exist is a poor commentary for a purported free nation scrambling to protect the civil rights of tax paying citizens. Yet, even with its positive messaging, the law falls short. As mentioned, it does stop dumb-struck lunatics like Thomas from wreaking havoc as he did with Roe – tossing the country into a cauldron of ungovernable bullshit and costing Republicans dearly in the 2022 midterms and likely alienating future enlightened generations from ever supporting or voting for them ever again. But… come on. We’re in silly land here.
It’s a start to restoring honor and liberty to a country that turned into a Third World banana republic last summer
The Respect for Marriage Act is a direct response to the abomination of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that used bigotry and religious fanaticism (two stalwarts of American repression for 250 years) to make lesser a portion of the citizenry through law, a virtual Jim Crow-level separation of persons due to natural orientation, no less egregious than the color of one’s skin, gender, or creed. Yet, the bill does not require states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell decision. When this corrupt Supreme Court overturns Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage come back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states to recognize marriages conducted in places where it is legal but in no way have to provide the same freedoms in their states. Not to mention the always ridiculous religious exceptions, which is the only way for Republican to be onboard – placating the Evangelical loons, even though some Evangelic council and churches, along with the Mormons, publicly supported the bill. The law would protect nonprofit (that’s a thing?) and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.
Not to get into this argument again, but how these safe-houses of bigotry, misogyny, science-denying, homophobic pedophilia get tax exempt status is beyond understanding even for the most intellectually challenged? Also, I think I can find something in the Bible that makes it impossible to get a speeding ticket anymore. I’m working on it. You can interpret any crazy shit in there.
So, why did twelve senate Republicans support the final approval of the bill? Well, for one, the survival of the crumbling Republican brand is on the line. In other words, the midterms scared the gay-bashing homophobia right out of these dinks. Also, three of the senators, Roy Blunt (Mo.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard Burr (N.C.) are retiring next month, while Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), vehemently anti-gay, understands the landscape (80-percent of Americans now support marriage equality), and moderates like the clueless Susan Collins (Maine), the goofy Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Mitt Romney (Utah), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Todd Young (Ind.) want to get elected again. They rightly read the results of the aforementioned midterms as a big loser for all the social bashing of women and gays.
Thirty-seven Republican senators disagree. But those who voted against the bill are from states or districts where freedom only applies to the size of one’s gun and right-wing media. The most ideologically glaring though is closet-hanger supreme, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), both of whom voted against self-interest. The bill also protects inter-racial marriages. McConnell is in an inter-racial marriage. For that matter, so is Clarence Thomas. But he can’t help himself; his wife is a card-carrying fascist and, you know, Thomas is scum. And Graham? I mean…
But the big take away from this historic if not sadly framed bill passing is that Republicans are in big trouble, and they’re about to make a shit-show of their middling majority in the House, make Donald Trump their presidential nominee and sink the whole fiasco once and for all, so they think placating 80-percent of the electorate is a good way to keep breathing. And who can argue? Might work.
For whatever the reasons or cynical political grandstanding, it got done. It’s a start to restoring honor and liberty to a country that turned into a Third World banana republic last summer by making a woman’s uterus ward of the state.
But as my late dad used to say, “One disaster at a time.”
THE GEN Z WAVE & THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL POLITICS Midterm Turnout of Young Voters Shifts Balance of Power
Last week we discussed the dire import of Women’s Reproductive Rights in stemming what looked like by all indications and historical perspective a red wave in the 2022 midterms. This week we cover the offshoot of that and more. The largest turnout for voters under twenty-five, and by extension, up to thirty-four years of age, flooded the polls to vote in this year’s midterms. Since 1972, when the eligibility age went down to eighteen, there has always been an alarmingly trifling response from the youth vote. Even now, only 25-percent of the electorate is in that category. But it grew this November. Big time. In fact, there is enough evidence to surmise that it was the Gen Z vote that retained the Senate and nearly held the House for Democrats on the abortion issue and far more. And to put a finer point on it; voted against Republicans and everything they stand for.
Is this a trend or an anomaly?
Republicans better hope the latter, because a new wave is coming in 2024 and it is firmly in the Democrats column.
To wit: Voters 18-29 voted at a 63 to 35 percent clips for Democrats. Between 30-44 it ticks down to 51 to 47 percent. But in a close election (and all of them are in this polarized age), these are significant stats.
Why?
Firstly, just to get it out of the way, the completely corrupt, stupid, and wholly unsustainable sacking of Roe v Wade by this Supreme Court – a politically motivated hack-job clan of Republican puppets – horrified this voting bloc. Nearly 80-percent of Gen Z wants the government to not control their bodies. To them it is science fiction, something out of Handmaid’s Tale, an abject abomination. It is not policy, religious goofiness, or a GOP talking point to rile up the slack-jawed unwashed for Gen Z. This is real freedom stuff for them. And they came out in droves to make their voices heard. And unless Republicans work with Democrats to codify these rights at the legislative level, it will be a major albatross on their chances to win on the national, and in many cases the state level for decades to come. For a good example of this, I give you that 2022 is the first time the Democrats picked up governorships during a midterm for a sitting Dem president since FDR in 1934. That deserves an “Oof!”
Secondly, nearly eight out of ten voters before the age of thirty want something done about Climate Change. They understand the science; they’re young, scared and pissed. And this is the case for those under eighteen, who are poised to vote soon. As long as Republicans refute Climate Change, vote against measures to address it, and blithely mock those who do, while sucking up to giant oil and coal concerns, they will not get the majority of these votes. This is the biggest issue for young voters, eclipsing even Reproductive Rights. Republicans, and moderate Democrats, are going to have to decide whether to speak to this issue with some empathy at the very least – much less do anything about it – or the Gen Z wave is going to wash them away.
Another sticky issue for Republicans going forward is gun violence. This is a generation raised on Active Shooter Drills. And as someone who endured the Duck & Cover bullshit I can tell you that stuff doesn’t just wash off the proverbial back. These kids do not have the same fervor for the Second Amendment as Boomer/Gen-X/Millennial Johnny Six-Pack and would very much like sane and measured gun laws. In some cases, gun violence – especially in their schools – out-polls Climate Change and Reproductive Rights and is a major concern for Gen Z. This is not just a Republican problem, as many Democrats have also been reticent to go too far in addressing this issue head-on. I do not get into the gun fight (no pun intended) on a personal level, but these kids do, and they are not backing down.
Is this a trend or an anomaly? Republicans better hope the latter.
Also, young voters are not inclined to embrace attacks on the LGBTQ community – hope Ron DeSantis is hearing this (likely not). Florida laws like Don’t Say Gay and other draconian measures are gangbusters for the late middle age to senior population down there, but nationally, especially among this new, powerful voting bloc, it is a loser. And by simply whitewashing it with a broad stroke of “Wokism Run Amok” is not going to cut it. Gen Z knows the nuances of this and are not fooled by bumper sticker slogans.
This also goes for the coming attack on Same Sex Marriage, which is also massively popular among non-idiots, who believe in things like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and are not Conservative Fascist lunatics like Clarence Thomas. A rousing eight out of ten Americans support Marriage Equality and it is a done deal. But so was Roe v Wade, so there is no telling what this bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court is liable to do to it. If Marriage Equality goes – and Thomas has already declared this a goal, including everything formally protected by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments – then Republicans can just pack up 2024 and go back to whatever 1950s drawing board they are working with and chuck it for something that can appeal to anyone not brain-damaged.
Gen Z was the most powerful voting bloc of 2022, including a sizable majority of women, who were and are equally motivated by much of what is covered above in the midterms. This is what shifted the balance from an historical imperative that “the party out of power runs the table in midterms” to something else entirely. I hear a lot about Donald Trump and his half-baked clown-show candidates, or some weird love for Joe Biden, or clever TV ads as “reasons.” It was Gen Z. The kids are indeed all right and they are now in this game. They are the first politically motivated and engaged young voters of my lifetime and they let their voices be heard, and even that was not as powerful as it can be if they get these numbers closer to thirty or even forty percent of the electorate. And as the Boomers shuffle off the mortal coil, and much of the disaffected Gen X crowd fade into apathy, this is the generation that will decide America’s fate and future.
Gen Z is here. And it is growing, year by year, and they do not want what Republicans are selling and they may soon put the squeeze on Democrats who think it’s a guarantee they will be there for them. It is not. They have to earn it.
WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS WINS! Democratic Midterm Upsets Resets the National Voice
I love being right.
It doesn’t always happen, but when it does and when it is for a measure I support, things are good around here. And what I have been saying since the summer, and the abhorrent Supreme Court Dobbs decision to strip 51-percent of the electorate’s rights with nothing but right-wing religious fanaticism and Republican fascism behind it, expunging abortion would be a losing argument in a general election for the Grand Old Party. And so, what by all historical perspective and economic reality should have been a strong Republican midterm election this month – the sadly misinformed were calling for a Red Wave – turned into the greatest first-midterm for a Democratic president in nearly a century. And there is one reason for this – well, three reasons in total (but we will get to those in the coming weeks) – and that is the overwhelming support for women’s reproductive rights and the fight to keep abortion legal.
By the time I am writing this the House Representatives still hasn’t been called for either party. That is a stunning sentence to digest for those in the know. Let me put it into perspective: When Barack Obama faced his first midterm elections in 2010, he had a similar low-40s approval rating, and he lost 60 seats. Six-Oh! Biden will lose maybe twelve, maybe less, and his party may still take the House. This is beyond shocking for politicos. This does not happen without a bizarre overreach impeachment (Clinton – 1998) or a war (Bush – 2004), and it would not have happened if not for the Dobbs decision to expunge nearly a half century of rights to women.
There have been a lot of post-mortems on the left and the right for this, pundits checking in on this and that, but I can assure you, January 6, the survival of democracy, shitty candidates, the Trump factor, and all that does not affect the outcome of any midterm the way Women’s Reproductive Rights did here. This is a dramatic shift in the electorate in mere months (Dobbs came down in June). Case in point, last November, Virginia, a solid blue state, elected a Republican governor just ten months after the rightwing insurrection. That would not have happened this November. In fact, Midwest battleground states, all of which Donald Trump won to squeak his way into the presidency in 2016, went completely for Democratic candidates across the board – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In Michigan, like in Montana, California, Kentucky, and Vermont (joining Kansas this past summer) reproductive rights were on the ballot and it was a clean sweep.
Turns out there is no place in America where giving government the right to jail women and their doctors for their healthcare decisions is popular. Exit polls suggest six out of ten Americans support the Fourth Amendment and the right to privacy for all citizens, not just men. This is what saved the Democrats from total annihilation in congress and the senate. Period. Full stop.
Highest inflation in forty years, spiking gas prices, hemorrhaging housing market, rising crimes should have guaranteed a slam dunk for the party out of power. Even if Republicans have no real answers for any of these issues. They are busy fighting Woke and mocking Nancy Pelosi’s husband and looking for Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even considering the backup quarterback theory – try this guy! – none of this mattered. What mattered was the government taking control of women’s bodies.
In some states, like Pennsylvania, the number one issue for voters was reproductive rights. More than inflation or crime. Numbers from several states, many of them supposedly red, were in a similar vein. Even races Republicans pulled out, they did so ten to fifteen and in some cases twenty points less than expected or how they did previously. What was the difference? Reproductive Rights.
Turns out there is no place in America where giving government the right to jail women and their doctors for their healthcare decisions is popular.
There was a wave all right, and that wave was abortion.
What led it?
Well, first off, of course, women. In almost every state in the union, new voter registrations for women were off the charts. We heard this during the summer when Dems rose in the polls and turned what looking like in May to be a bloodbath in the midterms into a blue comeback after the Dobbs decision, but then as the polls tightened from September into the final weeks of the election, that theme seemed to lose steam in the media. Many Republican voters, who were unimpressed with some of the weak candidates they were forced to vote for came home and began to show a closer race. But in the end, it was still the fear of government oppression that carried the day. It resonated far greater than economic concerns or really anything.
And lastly, and we’ll cover this extensively in the next column, the youth vote (or Gen Z) came out like never before. It was the largest showing in 2020 of any 18-24 voting bloc, but the midterms surpassed it, and in an off-year election. Traditionally more people (especially young people) vote in presidential elections. Not midterms. This one was different. Sure, climate change, gun violence, attacks on the LGBTQ community and a general disregard for decency are major concerns for them, but exit polls show that 40-percent of them were pissed about the Dobbs decision and wanted to send a message, while also protecting those rights at the state level going forward – another prediction I made that came roaring into focus in this surprising midterm. Republicans have a youth problem, and the way they approach all those issues above, it does not look like this is going to abate when a new batch are eligible to vote in 2024.
But that is for the next column.
For now, I will take my little victory lap and hope that as we move forward, every state will have the reproductive rights issue on the ballot and end this madness. Because if it is still an issue (the new prohibition) then Republicans are not going to win many elections.
LAST WEEK TO MIDTERMS FOLLIES Assault, Antisemitism, Social Security Threats, Twitter Sale & Women’s Rights
We’re down to the wire on the 2022 midterms that by all measure of history and the current state of the economy should be a Republican blowout. But there are problems with Republican candidates, the party’s position on permanently having the government control the innards of our female citizenry, and the usual parade of election deniers. (I am not certain I get the idea of saying every election is rigged but continue to run in elections. Isn’t that kind of the definition of insanity?) But who am I to judge? I have made my points clear here. You can’t vote Republican if you believe women should have control over their bodies. Economies shift with the wind, but rights are supposed to come from just being. Jefferson wrote something about this in the fancy Deceleration of Independence we’re so damn proud of. Independence. Good one. Guess women don’t count.
Be that as it may, I wish to review some of the weird shit that has gone down in the final week or so – some of it related to the election and some of it just the normal pathetic stuff.
Let’s start with Kanye West’s battle against a sneaker company to get more money and using his… I’ll be cynical here… (SHOCKER) faux outrage against Jewish Americans to do it. West has phony street cred. He is as much a capitalist whore as Elon Musk. (we’ll get to him later, stick it out). According to the perpetually unhinged West, Adidas has stolen his designs or some such, but no one actually cares about one rich asswipe taking on a massive sneaker asswipe corporation, so West decided to jam antisemitic language into his complaints. The tried-and-true Nazi stuff about Jews “owning everything” that he learned from his buddy Donald Trump has naturally caused a furor and, in the Black community, some scary traction, especially among young Black men. According to West’s marketing gurus this demographic is easily swayed by such rhetoric. I am not inclined to agree with this assessment, but it is the impetus for this shameful powerplay and has consequently cost West the rest of his sponsorship agreements. So, nice job there.
The new Prohibition – a completely unmanageable law based on moralism that will sink under its own untenable weight – must go.
All of this would have seemed like a fart in the proverbial wind until Brooklyn Nets point guard, and equally deranged idiot, Kyrie Irving began promoting an antisemitic screed by author Ronald Dalton called Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America on his Twitter account during all of this. A quasi-religious Turner Diaries for the hip hop set, which is actually the type of lazy historical philosophy that fringe hucksters like Glenn Beck peddle as intellectual discourse to people unfamiliar with the concept, it has, again, held sway in the growing “grievance politics” in African American subculture. This has brought a little-discussed aspect of racism that is ubiquitous beyond the white supremacy kind that gets all the publicity, especially since the MAGA January 6 fiasco.
But enough about this crap. Soon both West and Irving will go the way of the Hoola-Hoop.
And perhaps that’s where Twitter is going now that multi-billionaire funny man Elon Musk purchased it. The outcry seems odd, as Twitter is already mostly an imbecilic symbol of all that has gone sideways in our culture and will continue to thrive that way (see above paragraph). I don’t see the point of being pissed, unless you’re Steven King and you don’t want to pay Musk a price for “authentication checks.” Again, rich guys whining over ten bucks is enough to go on Twitter and threaten to take a hammer to someone’s spouse or whatever it is that happened to Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was just hanging around being married to the House Speaker and ended up outed as an underground sadist homosexual predator or a priest, your choice of title. Who knows what happened there? And should we care? The Pelosis are loaded. Enough rich people problems.
There was one non-celebrity issue that did perk up in the final week of Midterms before Election Day.
As if voting to provide equal rights under the Fourth Amendment to people without penises was not enough reason to spat on Republican scum, there was a leaked memo from the desk of another brainless twat, probably new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, of a proposed five-point GOP plan to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and major changes to Medicare. And while these are not completely wacky ideas, the timing could not be worse. And since no one believes a party that told us Roe v Wade was settled law, the denials are falling flat.
Alas, it is a long shot that this will do much to shift the narrative that Republicans have gained poll momentum over the past month due to another spike in gas prices, a vacillating stock market and continued high consumer goods prices. Statistics were desperately floated by Democrats about a 70-year high in corporate profits to combat this, but I’m not sure progressives will feel particularly jazzed by this clever “but-what-about-ism” revelation. The whole rich asswipe thing again?
Still, nothing has changed on this ballot for me. The federal protections for women’s reproductive rights in Roe v Wade is gone, and it is not coming back. The Right-Wing, Republican bucket-holding Supreme Court decided to let states decide the legality of private and safe medical procedures dealing with the organs of our citizens. Republicans want to make this the purview of the government.
What do you want?
Vote accordingly.
For me, independence is the main issue.
The new Prohibition – a completely unmanageable law based on moralism that will sink under its own untenable weight – must go.
NEW JERSEY VOTERS: PROTECT WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS A Message to the People to Halt the March of Republican Fascism
I’ve got news for President Biden. Come January 22nd, we will have Pro-Life majorities in the House and Senate and we’ll be taking the cause of the right to Life to every state house in America! – Mike Pence, Former Vice President of the United States, Tweet at 10:40 PM, 10/18/22
The United States has been teetering on the brink of a fascist takeover that began with the presidency of Donald Trump, one in which he refused to concede, leading to months of false claims of voter fraud, frivolous lawsuits, chronic lying, and finally the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And it ramped up big time this summer, as Trump’s political tool, the U.S Supreme Court ignored half a century of “settled law” to rob 51 percent of the electorate of its Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to private reproductive freedom. For decades the Republicans wanted to take away the rights of women, said they wished to take the rights of women, and they did. And soon they will come for contraceptive rights, voting rights, and inevitably marriage equality. The umbrella of Roe v Wade and its constitutional provisions have been cast to the wind, and now all freedoms to privacy are up for grabs.
But you can do something about it. Especially here in New Jersey. Vote against Republican rule. Reject fascism. Fight for the rights of ALL citizens to keep the government out of our bodies, our secular laws, and our right to civic union between adults.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Justice Clarence Thomas in the wake of the Dobbs decision states: “Substantive due process … has harmed our country in many ways. Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.”
The fascist right-wing Court has spoken in action and words. A former Republican VP has sent out his threats loud and clear. Read those quotes again, because they are frightening warnings to you and your sisters, mothers, daughters, and friends. Every woman is under attack – even those who are so-called Pro Life. Now the government has the right to force abortions in the future if there are food shortages or another deadly pandemic. You think wearing a mask was a bitch? Wait until they come for you organs. Because they can. Don’t think it can happen? Did anyone think fifty years of settled law backed by lying candidates for the highest court in the land, who claimed it was so, and yet struck it down, would be toast in a few month’s time? Senator Lindsay Graham, who denied the Obama pick for the Supreme Court ten months before the 2016 election, turned around and changed his position on the “too close to an election decision” and rammed anti-Roe candidate, Amy Coney Barrett through. She too said Roe was “settled law” and voted it down. These people will say anything. I am not overstating it. Can you ever believe another Republican again? Can you afford to?
The horrific rise of the Religious Right during the Reagan Administration that began jamming Christian propaganda down our throats, railroading the First Amendment’s right to practice our own religious beliefs, and not that of one single religion and dictate its ancient laws into our secular legal construct has come to fruition. The Right has the courts, and they will likely take the House this November and as Pence stated clearly only a few days ago, they are coming for a complete national abortion ban. Keeping the U.S. Senate out of Republican hands and in two years the White House from a fascist regime must be the aim of every American who prizes freedom over invasive government and theocratic oppression. We are headed to an Iranian style construct if we do not vote… and vote AGAINST Republicans.
The umbrella of Roe v Wade and its constitutional provisions have been cast to the wind, and now all freedoms to privacy are up for grabs.
If people in Alabama (or wherever) want this nonsense, I feel sorry for the women and LGBTQ and African American voters there, but I do not live in Alabama. Thank goodness. I live in New Jersey. And I implore of NJ voters to consider what is at stake here.
Everyone who has read even one of my columns knows I am an independent and have voted Republican and Democrat and mostly Independent before, publicly backed Republican and Democratic candidates in this space since 1997, and gave funds proudly to my friend, Republican Rod Astorino’s many campaigns, while also challenging a Republican congressman to a fist fight that caused a bit of a stir, which, according to his staff, helped Democrat Josh Gottheimer get elected. But the stacking of the Supreme Court and denying the votes on Merrick Garland and the rush to vote in Amy Coney Barrett before the 2020 election by hypocrites and totalitarian lunatics who continue to defend the atrocities of January 6 cannot stand. But that pales to the enslaving of women in this country, something we here in N.J. have kept legal, as it should be. The dismantling of the U.S. Constitution’s protections of rights to privacy is in a shambles and Justice Clarence Thomas says he will now use the Dobbs decision to go nuts.
And to you supposed conservatives, it is time to come clean – either you are for a dominating government that decides your religious beliefs and can invade your bodies and mess with your schools and ban books, all from the fascist handbook, or not. First, they come for your neighbor’s rights, and next the precedent will be there to come for yours. Wake up. You vote time and again against your interests, never mind you apparent flimsy ideologies.
The rest of us must ignore all Republican propaganda about inflation and supposed battling crime (where was the outrage when police were being beaten with Trump flag polls on January 6?). There has been recession and inflation under Republican control, as well as Democratic, and crime fluctuates with the times – we are still recovering from a once in a century pandemic. Republicans know as much as Democrats about any of it. Which is nothing. Those things will turn around as they always do with the movement of the private sector, which conservatives – at least since the Trump nightmare – conveniently ignore.
As Reagan said, the most frightening words are “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Well, Republicans won’t do anything about any of the things they are trying to distract you to believe they can do. Build the wall? Bring back manufacturing? How much bullshit can you eat? But they will and are coming for your rights. They’ve done it already, and they will do it again. Listen to Pence. Heed Thomas. They are serious and have power or want power and we have to stop it. Especially here in NJ.
Keep Republican Fascism out of our state.
More and more states run by Republicans are banning abortion in every case – the life of the mother, rape, incest, health issues. They want to ban contraception next, because religious maniacs like Pence, and most Republicans, many of which are phonies who hold their noses and ignore his kind, want this. Make your voice heard. Forget protests. Bitching on cable TV. Tying to convince MAGA drones of reality. Forget that. Vote. And vote out Republicans in NJ. Support the rights of New Jerseyans.
I used to be a sportswriter. That’s how I eventually got the gig here. I was covering sports for a paper in Westchester called the North County News in the early 1990s and hosting sports-related radio shows when I finished my first book (on music, mind you), and was hired by the publishers to do the “sports thing.” I ended up penning a sports column for the East Coast Rocker during the mid-90s before moving back to my first love – bashing idiots, uncovering the folly of existence, and generally being an asshat. Also, music. Hence, Reality Check. Twenty-five years later, I’m still at it. But I’ve written my share of pieces on seminal and cultural news-making sports events and figures before in this space. And everyone knows I love the N.Y. Yankees. Grew up in the Bronx. My late dad was an epic fan, and for a time in my youth it was the one thing (as stated beautifully in Field of Dreams and one of the reasons I weep every damn time I watch the film) we could always talk about. In fact, we talked about the Yanks the last time I spoke with him. It was our thing. And I really wish he was here to see Yankees 30 year-old right fielder, Aaron Judge tie and then best a former Yankees right fielder, Roger Maris, for the most home runs in the history of the Yankees franchise, the American League, and, as many important people around the sport are now arguing, all of baseball history.
It was so cool seeing Judge do it. I have followed him, as I’ve followed all Yankees players either through the farm system, trades, or free agency since the mid to late 60s, and he is a class act – cool as a cucumber, humble, and damned talented. He is not just a slugger. Like Maris before him, he is the league’s best defensive right fielder, and has played an excellent center field too, which is nuts because he is over six-foot tall, and you’d figure he couldn’t cover ground out there. But you would be wrong. At the time of this writing, he is also close to leading the AL in batting and well ahead in runs batted in – a solid hitter and super clutch. He was the right guy to stand together with Maris, and eventually surpass him with 62 dingers to become the all-time single season HR champ.
But he’s not, technically. Is he? This whole thing would have been so much more historic if there had not been the Steroid Era of the late 1990s into the first months of this century. Can you imagine how this would have reverberated throughout baseball – a sport of tradition and rich history, that reveres the names the N.Y. Yankees have rung down through the ages, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, etc., if after 61 years, another Yankees right fielder took the crown? The first guy wore #9, the new guy wears #99. Crazy fun! But nope. Baseball was silly with drug-jacked monsters for a spate, and that takes a bit of the sheen off this affair.
Although now a tougher chore to get to even 50 home runs today with league-wide drug testing, during the Steroid Era, a ton of heretofore mediocre major leaguers, bulked up on steroids or human growth hormones and other things, hit a lot of home runs, and still others rose above that crowded field to obliterate the single-season home run record nearly every fucking year. St. Lous Cardinals’ first baseman (a man I called “a human parade float” in these pages back in 1998 for a piece called “Freak Show Baseball”) hit 70, and Chicago Cubs right fielder, Sammy Sosa, hit over 60 homers twice, as did McGuire, by the way. Both of those guys were okay players before the drugs, but it was when one of the best players in the game, Barry Bonds – allegedly motivated by the jealousy he felt for McGuire and Sosa, far lesser players than he – did every possible steroid and rub and gobbled every pill and took every shot he could get his hands on to become part android and belt 73 home runs in 2003.
Before the Steroid Era only two players hit over 50 home runs from the time when Maris broke Babe Ruth’s 1927 mark of 60 in ’61. But during it, weak hitting borderline major leaguers were routinely smacking 30, 40, 50 homers a year. What a wild time of misrule it was. It was so off the charts, the U.S. government had to get involved. The league woke up under its pile of money to “police” itself, so it could hold fast to its unconstitutional anti-trust exemption. That was when it conducted a series of “anonymous tests” on random players, although many of the names were leaked. Then came full testing that brought half-year to season-long suspensions for those caught doping. Immediately, offense, especially home runs, plummeted and players who were big-contract stars faded. The sport subsequently panicked and “juiced” baseballs to get homers back, but things got a tad goofy two years ago, so last year they deadened the balls, and fuck it – let’s get back to Aaron Judge’s incredible 2022 season.
He was the right guy to stand together with Maris, and eventually surpass him with 62 dingers to become the all-time single season HR champ.
Putting this all into perspective, Judge did something no one has done without juicing in 61 years, and only two others (both Yankees) have done sans performance enhancement substances. He’s had a season for the ages, and because of it, his achievements have drudged up all the past inequities to the MLB record books and prompted a revisionist view of the era from sportswriters, commentators and ex-players. This was already taking place in the Hall of Fame voting for McGuire, Sosa, and Bonds, as all of them, statistical locks for the Hall of Fame, have been consequently denied entry, bringing attention back to the true “legitimate” Single Season Home Run King, and, well, Aaron Judge.
Because of Judge’s exploits, another Aaron has also come to mind, the late, Hank Aaron. There is suddenly chatter on his 755 as the “legitimate” All-Time Career HR Record, calling into question the aforementioned Barry Bonds, who “artificially” drugged his way to 762. In a single season, Judge has done more than awake the echoes of Yankees greatness or thrill the league with his chase. He has reminded everyone of the folly of the Steroid Era two decades later. He did it, as far as we know, “clean,” as Roger Maris’s son said the day Judge tied his dad: “He should be the home run champ, and baseball should recognize it.”
I am not getting involved with that argument. I can only wrap this up by stating for the record that Aaron Judge had the best non-steroid season of my lifetime.
THE CRUEL DUMBNESS OF RON DESANTIS Or How to Use Innocent Humans as Political Props and Get Sued
Florida Governor and phony political hack grandstanding media whore Ron DeSantis thought it was a good idea to lure 48 Venezuelan migrants in San Antonia, Texas onto buses and then air shuttle them to Massachusetts to continue his I OWN EVERY RIGHT-WING GRIEVANCE variety show. And while wildly popular with racists and general morons who get their news from gum wrappers and Fox News, it has painfully backfired. This embarrassingly unoriginal and agonizingly transparent political, and more pointedly inhumane stunt has drawn the usual ire from the sane, but now a lawsuit and investigation could bring what Tallassee immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci suggested was “human trafficking and kidnapping charges” down on him.
Up until DeSantis piggybacked on this cynical idea from Texas Governor Gregg Abbott and Arizona Governor Don Ducey – the Republican bigot fascist brigade – he was rolling. He is the leading Republican candidate for president if Donald Trump goes to jail for stealing classified government documents, defrauding the state of New York, or fomenting an insurrection against the United States, or if he finally has that massive heart attack his appearance and diet has been hinting at for decades. He has managed to all-but own the base of Republican politics 2022, which is now anti-LGBTQ, anti-women’s reproductive rights, fearmongering, book-banning embrace of ignorance, which predictably shot him to the top of his party’s dung heap. He was the man, and may still be among the great unwashed, but this migrant thing is so onerous and pitiful, and to tweak Evangelicals, anti-Christian, never mind plain stupid, it may have not only gotten him into legal hot water, it might (gulp!) queer his chances at high office.
When you mull over the details of this stunt, it gets more and more horrifyingly stupid. And none of it had to happen. If DeSantis wasn’t obsessed with owning the national narrative of every Trumpist bottom feeding edict, this likely gets laughed off in the high-grade glue sniffing stage. Because, you have to ask: Why is the governor of Florida involved in quasi-border security debates he knows next to nothing about and has no jurisdiction over? Isn’t there enough stuff to wreck in Florida? Health Care? Civil Rights? Environment? The man has his hands full with his minimum ten press conferences a day schedule. A mere toe stubbing merits a podium, some mics, and his best 1987 Ronnie Reagan “deep in dementia facial tics mistaken for pride” schtick. The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football, despite it being a big winner in Florida, which may give us a clue why this cruel prank got out of the glue sniffing stage.
Of course, DeSantis stands by all of it. Using Florida taxpayer cash to pay conmen from something called Vertol Systems Inc. armed with what is termed in the underground as a “birddog fee” to lure (a term used by San Antonio law enforcement) 48 migrants, many of them women and children, from a sanctioned government migrant installation to an undisclosed taxpayer funded hotel with the promise of food vouchers and job opportunities in Boston. These poor, duped, confused and desperate people were then shipped to Florida on the taxpayer’s dime to give DeSantis another PR “win,” before hauling them off to Martha’s Vineyard in a tax-funded $615,000 airplane trip (that is over 12-grand a migrant, even though the normal cost of a flight from anywhere in Florida to Boston is like $400). This all done in service of a ham-fisted “gotcha” on a sanctuary state. The guess by those with brain bubbles was that DeSantis would make the (very expensive and likely taxpayer defrauded) knuckle-dragging point that New England elitists would be outed as out-of-touch with illegal immigration? Except none of the migrants are illegal. They were peacefully awaiting asylum like every migrant in the history of a nation built by poor and frightened people escaping persecution.
The whole thing is like watching a monkey trying to fuck a greased football
A stunned and disgusted Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salavar held a press conference to announce the investigation into this alleged crime, during which he could not fathom the exploitation of humans for what he described as “nothing more than political postering before being stranded with no shelter or food on an island off the coast of Massachusetts.” Sheriff Salavar concluded, “What infuriates me is that these poor people, who are here legally, and have every right to be where they were, were preyed upon by paid out-of-state operatives, who hoodwinked them into taking this needless trip to Florida.”
So, like some evil Bond villain petting a white Persian cat, DeSantis orchestrates this thing from afar, ripping off both the performance art of governors’ Abbott and Ducey (who run states actually on the fucking border) while making his weekly “Look at me, because daddy didn’t love me” cry for attention. And, in a move that might piss off the hardline anti-immigrant cabal, DeSantis’s scrambling administration began trying to make this a “human rights” effort by the governor, stating their hopes to cherry-pick 48 random people, lie to them, and send them all over the place before dumping them with no food or money on an island “for their benefit.”
The fun postscript to this travesty is that now faced with a class action lawsuit and criminal investigation, if DeSantis is found culpable in these shenanigans he will not only go down but the very migrants he hopes to kick out of America will get special visas due to being victims of human trafficking. And, to make matters worse, this heretofore political genius has ticked off the all-important Latino vote for Republicans in his state. The GOP previously enjoyed the lion’s share of the 200,000 Venezuelans in Florida, not to mention Cubans, who recall these kinds of draconian tactics from the late dictator Fidel Castro and are starting to voice their displeasure.
So, you know, a lose-lose-lose-lose move by the leading GOP candidate for president.
The day I am writing this, which also happens to be the day it goes to press, I will turn sixty. That is six decades on this planet, which seems simultaneously to be perfectly acceptable to the time/space continuum and yet freakishly bizarre in the same framework. Like most of life, it’s all occurred incredibly fast and painfully slow at the same time. What I wrote in this space twenty years ago on the eve of turning forty, still stands. I have always seen the whole thing as if living several lives, not just one. None of us remain unchanged, unevolved, even though most of us fight like hell to avoid it. Then I went and had a daughter, who has been a whole bunch of people in just fourteen years, never mind sixty. She obliterated any quaint illusions of stasis for the purposes of slowing down time, subjectively explaining my own plight while objectively reviewing another with the same DNA.
Wait, what was my point?
Oh, right, in 2002 I pondered, “Aging, or should I say, experiencing life, is an odd process, seeing how most of what you really know is what is right in front of you and most of what you’ve already accumulated in the way of knowledge is ghostly, like a dream of some kind. And by the time you reference this crap it’s so completely meaningless in the realm of your current reality, you seem like a doddering factfinder trying to impress the congregation.”
But then a few weeks ago I surmised about how cool it was that Paul McCartney has lived to the ripe young age of eighty, despite, you know, the drugs and the rock star stuff – especially in the wake of two of the other four Beatles having died young, or younger. And I believe that too, because I having survived long enough to gather information and experience and having the honor to watch nieces and nephews and your daughter grow up and your dearest friends and family age long enough to bitch about the same stuff and get excited by the other stuff is very cool.
Am I saying here that I prefer to be alive at sixty than dead?
Yes, I am saying that… and more.
Then, yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II died. She’d been queen longer than I’ve been around. Damn. That is titanic perspective right there on the primacy of hanging in. Good for her.
It’s good to be above ground and falling apart and turning a deep, dark crimson inside.
Having a bit of road behind you is a boon in England, but aging is something we do not prize in the U.S. There are billions of dollars spent in this country to retard the aging process or make us forget about it or to try and stay “relevant” or “hip” or at be least aware of things around us that people much younger than us in ages we used to be comprehend. I am lucky to have worked covering pop culture and specifically music these past thirty or so years, and twenty-five of them at the Aquarian Weekly. Because this paper is both history (we’re in the R&R Hall of Fame archives, bitches) and current events, I’ve enjoyed penning this column. It has kept me engaged in some strange and dangerous places, and I am better for it. I have been afforded the ability to write books on history and current events in music as well, and let’s face it, it is an advantage to be alive to do it. I have always been proud to be a post-Boomer writer. I like that I straddle the demon line between Boomer and X and know enough to opine on you Y and Z fuckers and millennials and now with this daughter of mine, whatever crazy crap you kids are cooking up.
I mean, it ain’t Queen Elizabeth II perspective, but it’s pretty good.
Hey, we’re all getting older, and for each of us it all comes down to perspective. When I was forty, I did not feel old or out of touch at all. In fact, it was the first time in my hell-bent life that I felt like a functioning human being, which I did not entertain in my thirties. Hell, my twenties were a blur, so let’s not belabor that nonsense. But after forty, and after fifty for that matter, I could see the finish line, making me less inclined to waste time and procrastinate on the things that make me happy personally, professionally and creatively. Getting to six-oh means I am getting closer to twenty-five years married to the best person I know, but I will keep her out of this, because she is much younger than me and keeps reminding me of it and should. But just having all those years behind us and the memories and the trust and the fortitude we built can only be achieved through the years. There is no substitute for time. You can’t cheat it, or it cheats you. And I must say having lived, and having lived with her, has taught me that it’s good to be above ground and falling apart and turning a deep, dark crimson inside.
There was a time when I would mark my writing life and its remaining time by Hunter S. Thompson, who did all he could to end his life about fifty times in his sixty-plus years among us. Then Hunter said, “Fuck it, I’m done” in 2005 and put a bullet in his head. That bummed me out for so many reasons, but the crucial one is that the “Let’s see how long Hunter can keep this up?” measure clock stopped. In his suicide note he remarked, “It is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring.”
Hunter wasn’t wrong about much, but he was way off on that one. Or at least he was way off for me. I’ll keep this going as long as I can love and be loved, question and be questioned, write and read and listen to the blessed glorious sounds coming from my turntable. Watch baseball. Smoke cigars. Drink gin. Watch sun sets. Eat apples. Fuck. Fight. Have black cats. Be the guy who was born the same year as the Rolling Stones and Spider-Man and miss the things and the people who could not for one reason or another continue to move along with me. But I remember them fondly. It’s what you do with time.
DON’T BE FOOLED – ALL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES WANT ABORTION BAN
As the mid-term campaign season heats up after Labor Day the key word has dramatically shifted from Inflation to Abortion. Thanks to the June Supreme Court Dobbs decision that systemically enslaved women, the political narrative has flipped from a Republican wave to a Democratic surge. There has been an enormous increase in Democratic Party (the only party that stands for women’s rights left) support, enthusiasm, and voter registration across the country, and it shows no signs of abating. Because of the aforementioned inflation, President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and mostly racist gerrymandering, the Republican Party will take the House, but the Senate and the national fervor has gone from close Republican to strong Democrat in a wild two and a half months. None of this data has escaped Republican candidates, who now either run the other way from Dobbs, lie that they don’t support complete bans on abortion, or simply scrub their strong anti-women’s reproductive rights rhetorical history in the hopes no one will realize a fascist Republican-controlled Supreme Court has stolen the liberties of 51 percent of the electorate.
A new Pew Research Center poll the last week of August showed abortion rising as a “very important” priority for Democratic voters – 46 percent in March to 71 percent currently. Excuse me? What? You couldn’t find a 25-percent jump in a political position to support a law banning the drowning of kittens in this polarized environment. Even Republican voters (poor, misguided fools) support some portion of women’s reproductive rights – rape, incest, the life of the mother – but that’s not where their party has been or is now. It’s currently a federal crime in Texas, with a lifetime sentence for murder, to get an abortion today. It is complete madness, and it is all on Republicans. And those running with an R next to their name are finally getting the hint people are pissed.
Take New York’s 19th Congressional district special election last month. Talk about Purple. These people have voted for Obama, Trump and Biden in that order. Republican Marc Molinaro was a shoo-in before Dobbs. After Dobbs, Democrat Pat Ryan beat him because he rightly warned voters Molinaro, if elected, could move New York in the direction of enslaving its women like Texas, tossing them in jail for what happens inside their bodies.
This special election result, and the results of four others including Red State Alaska in which former Masked Singer and Wife Swap contestant Sarah Palin was defeated, and the numbers coming out of the Kansas voter overwhelming election support stopping a ban on abortion, has reverberated throughout the Grand Old Party. Democrats have out-performed prognostications and previous electoral metrics by as many as eleven points in the aggregate. As a result, Republican candidates should be and are becoming concerned. You can see it in their complete refusal to touch the issue their party made an issue. But don’t believe for one minute any of the whiplash pivots Republican candidates make. Just remember what the game show president’s parade of Supreme Court Justices said when asked about Roe v Wade when being vetted for the gig. “It’s settled law.” Really?
Take the phony Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who trails Democrat Mark Kelly by eight points, causing him to scrub his website of his support of a “federal personhood law,” which would turn fetuses into full citizens with social security numbers and allow pregnant women to claim as burdens on their tax returns. Masters then, within hours after the pro-women’s rights Kansas vote, immediately released a video softening his abortion stance from “100% pro-life” to “exceptions across the board.” Sure. “Settled law” and all that.
If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power.
“We regularly update the website,” said a spokesman for previously bold “100% pro-life — no exceptions” Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett, who within hours after the Supreme Court decision, wiped that nonsense from his campaign platform. Same goes for Iowan Republican House candidate Zach Nunn, who a month before Dobbs raised his hand when asked during a primary debate in May whether “all abortions should be illegal in this country.” After Nunn’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Cindy Axne, ran an ad using the video of this, Nunn rushed to publish a fifth-grade level op-ed backtracking like a busted cheating spouse.
Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Jensen (a fucking doctor!) was asked about abortion by Minnesota Public Radio in March and said he would “try to ban abortion” if he were running the state. This is before the Supreme Court left it up to states to enslave women, and now he says he supports abortions for victims of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is threatened. Something no one believes. Because, you know, “Settled law.”
To wit: The week before I write this, South Carolina State Rep. Neal Collins emotionally recounted the arduous journey faced by a 19-year-old woman whose fetus was not viable, but that attorneys told her doctor they couldn’t extract it because it still had a heartbeat — the standard set in the bill supported by Collins that had gone into effect just the week before. “The doctor told me at that point there is a 50 percent chance she will pass the fetus in the toilet and a greater than 50 percent chance that she’s going to lose her uterus. There’s a ten percent chance that she will develop sepsis and herself, die.” The young girl was sent back into the street. Collins later blubbered: “That weighs on me. I voted for that bill. These are affecting people.” Days later he voted for another bill banning abortion. “Settled…” Oh, forget it.
No Republican should EVER be believed on this issue. If you want women to retain the rights to their organs, then you should NEVER under any circumstances allow a Republican to gain power. If they do, they have shown time and again they will strip you of your rights and do not care who believes what. They are lying and will continue to lie to save their political hides. But their actions speak loudly.
The mid-terms are coming. And there is only one voice you have. Keep Republicans from office until a national protection for women’s reproductive rights are guaranteed. And if this means taking the senate and eliminating the filibuster and filling the Supreme Court with justices that will protect their constitutional rights or get enough true Americans in the Houser and Senate to make it law, so be it.
Until then, ALL Republicans want to do is control the rights of women, no matter what they say.
Period.
Believing otherwise is stupid and insane. And if you vote for a Republican, you get what you deserve.
