Pat Robertson’s Alzheimer’s Controversy!

Just so that we have the record clear, the actual statements that Pat Robertson made are clear and free of any distortion, in particular of distortion by the far left, this is exactly and officially what Pat Robertson said regarding the ethical problem involved with being married to some one with Alzheimer’s Disease. Pat Robertson did say that you might want to consult another ethicist because it was a very difficult situation.
The question that was posed was a man whose wife has Alzheimer’s has begun seeing someone else. Pat Robertson’s reasoning is that the man must divorce the wife (in order not to be committing adultery) but that the husband is free from his vows because of the clause “till death do us part” because Alzheimer’s really is a “walking death”.
It seems like every year or every few years, maybe even on a six-month cycle there is another controversy coming out of Pat Robertson’s mouth- the United States should send an agent to shoot Chavez, Ariel Sharon’s stroke was an act of God in response to Sharon’s “dividing the land of Israel”, you name it. Many of his statements over the years have shocked even others within the Christian right.
Without commenting on the other controversies he’s been involved with over the years, because that would just be a book long document if I did that, I don’t know if I really disagree that strongly with Pat Robertson on this one. If the wife is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, I’m not sure the husband seeing another woman even really qualifies as adultery. Pat Robertson did clarify that the wife needed to be put in qualified custodial care. Can it be said though that a marriage to a wife with advanced Alzheimer’s belongs within the same ethical categories? Pat clearly sees the difficulty of this situation in terms of it being a crisis and for a Christian particularly a crisis of faith. I’m actually going to side with the big Pat Robertson on this one. The husband is betraying a woman whose mind is failing and won’t be coming back? That’s pretty close to saying that a man is cheating on his dead spouse. I don’t even know if I’d be legalistic enough to call it adultery. Now that John Edwards guy who was cheating on his wife who had cancer- that is unacceptable, but I think she more or less had her mental cognizance still. This is one Pat Robertson controversy where I really don’t see where the controversy is exactly. Pat Robertson was the first to admit that this was probably over his head ethically. He didn’t even say he had a definitive answer really.
How much controversy about this one? There’s lots-of course, this is what Pat Robertson does best. Well, very clearly there is the perception that the left and moderates have that Pat Robertson is a gay hating, woman hating, far right wingnut. But the controversies surrounding Pat Robertson are often internal even within the Christian Right. Check out this evangelical blog post denouncing Pat Robertson. Strong statements against the man from his fellow Evangelicals, something to behold: http://www.russellmoore.com/2011/09/15/christ-the-church-and-pat-robertson/
A repudiation of scripture? Russell Moore calls Pat Robertson statements “Canaanite”! When you start using scripture against him like that, that’s fighting words.
Pat Robertson was certainly born with a specific gift for massive confrontations like this. It’s truly unreal. It would surprise not at all if he comes up with another one within the next six months. He’s like a walking argument.

Do the Ostrich: The Strange World of Pre-Velvet Underground Lou Reed

Yes, I’ve done the whole theme lately of sixties and seventies rock and roll oddities( “Once You Understand” by Think, “Moulty” by The Barbarians, and “Mr. Turnkey” by Zager and Evans) and also for a long time I’ve been anticipating the release of this album with Lou Reed and Metallica. This material is sort of an oddity, although not nearly the sick joke that the other oldies oddities mentioned above are. This is Lou Reed in 1964 before the Velvet Underground recording under the name The Primitives. That and many other curiosities of pre-Velvet Underground Lou Reed have resurfaced on YouTube. He worked for a small record company called Pickwick Records as a songwriter and session guitarist.



Lou Reed made fairly atonal electric guitar music as far back as the early 60’s. Phil Spector was a very strange guy at that point, his music wasn’t that odd though. The only music that I’ve heard that is quite this ahead of this time from the era is the soundtrack that a teenage Frank Zappa did for a very hard to find film called The World’s Greatest Sinner. I actually reviewed the World’s Greatest Sinner back when I used to write for Polly Staffle back in 2010. The World’s Greatest Sinner soundtrack is truthfully similar. This is very dissonant, hard music that re-calls late 70’s and early 80’s punk and goth type bands but existed in the early 60’s. The distinctive harsh Velvet Underground guitar sound was already developed on these tracks.

Book Review: The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet

I started reading this book in preparation for another review that I considered to be a much bigger deal. David Mamet is at as director of the HBO film of the Phil Spector murder trial, and has created substantial controversy by stating in an interview by stating that he thought Phil Spector might actually be innocent. Lana Clarkson friends and family flipped out, and the controversy ensues. However, preparation for the day this HBO film comes out lead me to do a little back homework on what David Mamet is doing these days. In 2011, he put out what I would think would be an almost equally controversial book, one in which he describes why he has abandoned the political left for the political right.
It’s a decent book. It probably could have had thirty-fifty pages cu from it for sake of readability, but it’s worth a read.
One of the things this book does is target liberal arts education. He says theory, multiculturalism, and deconstruction are completely useless, and do nothing to prepare the student for useful work. As Mamet points out, there is no paying occupation in standing up and being offended by perceived racism or homophobia for example, but that is largely what the identity politics of the liberal arts school have encouraged. Mamet calls it a developmental difficulty. That’s pretty funny, I’d say he’s got a point. Even better then that he uses new age to attack the liberal arts educational institution, pointing to liberal arts students becoming “life coaches” or “spiritual advisors” is his critique. Now that’s just plain funny. I had that Whittle-Utter guy writing in because I didn’t like his films, he was a Berkley graduate. Whittle-Utter is all about life coaches and new age therapy. He complained that making the film The Fall drove him into financial ruin. Mamet was on target, that’s for sure. Whittle-Utter was a strong supporter of Hilary Clinton’s presidential run. Mamet didn’t pick up on indie rock, which I would have in a big way. Well, none among us are perfect, I find myself more and more critical of Ron Paul on foreign affairs. I.e., I like Ron Paul’s ideas for a radical dismantling of welfare systems and income tax, but I feel that the U.S. really should put a bullet in the brain of Julian Assange.
Mamet’s general premise is strong. It’s based on the notion that liberalism is a victim mentality that revolves around resentment. He does it pretty well, he goes after gender studies and feminism, he talks about how he gets asked at lectures why he hates women forty years after the review of his first play. I do have to admit this though- Anders Brevik, the shooter over in Norway? He writes for pages and pages about the influence of theory, gender studies, deconstruction-in his manifesto. I have to say, I laughed so hard at his assertions about the impact he thought such movements had on the political landscape. While I agree with David Mamet on the failings of the liberal arts education, it’s only fair if I chuckled at Brevik, I have to chuckle at David Mamet a little bit for writing almost the same thing. Obama doesn’t like being called a Marxist, the identity politics people like Judith Butler use Marx as a footnote i.e. they exist as a marginal and largely powerless minority. Mamet writes a whole chapter on bumper stickers. That’s kind of funny. Again though, doesn’t that in some sense give the fringe left too much credit?
This Spector movie for HBO should be really good. David Mamet is clearly not afraid to jump into a controversy about politics or law with a strong opinion, so I expect the HBO Spector flick to be really provocative, even if I think Spector shot that chick.

Wacky Rock and Roll Fun Fact! Mr. Turnkey!

Did you know that “Mr. Turnkey” by Zager and Evans is probably the only pop song about a rapist who nails his wrist to the prison wall?

Zager and Evans had a hug hit in 1969 with their psychedelic single “In The Year 2525”. However, that was to be their only hit. They did release this little known follow-up single “Mr. Turnkey”, whose lyrics tell the heartwarming tale of a rapist who nails his own wrist to the prison wall in penance for his crimes.
How could this song not have been a number one pop hit?

Groovy Rock N’ Roll with a Message for Today’s Young People

The single “Once You Understand” was put out in the seventies by a band called Think. That was a 70’s rock project featuring Bobby Susser who is predominantly known for children’s music. This single, which remarkably was a minor hit in the early 70’s, is a heartwarming song that deals with family conflicts between adults and children that set out to reach America in a profoundly moving way. There are little sound bites of parents arguing with teenagers and then at the end you hear a voice that is supposed to be a cop telling a father that he’d better come down to the station house, his son has died of an overdose. All with crappy seventies music and the repeated lyric “things get a little easier, once you understand”.
The whole album is available to listen to here:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/365_days_18_thi.html

The rest of the album is similar material attempting to deal with and talk through teen-parent conflicts especially involving drugs. It does so in very weird ways. Ironically, the music sounds, well, very drugged out.
I don’t think either the single or the album that went with it was meant to be a joke at all.
Years before that, there was “Moulty” by the Barbarians. This was the touching story of a boy that lost his hand, but didn’t lose his hopes and dreams…

“Moulty” by the 60’s garage band The Barbarians is a similar case. The drummer for the band had a prosthetic hand, and they ended up releasing a single in which Moulty gives a motivational speech for all those teenagers to keep believing even if they might think they are “ a little bit different, or a little bit strange”.
I don’t think “Moulty” was meant to be a joke at all either. The drummer really had a prosthetic hand.

Film Review: When They Came After Ward Churchill

Reflecting on the tenth year since the 9-11 tragedy. Ward Churchill, do you remember this freak?



This guy compared victims of 9-11 to the Nazi Eichmann. He was an academic. He eventually got fired from University of Colorado. He’s also an idiot.
What he has a Marxist spin on 9-11, he saw it as a strike of oppressed people against the power structure of empire. Here are two things that leaves out:

1. Osama Bin Laden, far from a proletariat, had extreme wealth.
2. Osama Bin Laden’s struggle was to convert the world to Islam, or at least his understanding of it.
I would also like to point out that Ward Chruchill is not, as he claims, a Native American. He’s white. So when he uses his whole Native American angle as a rhetorical device, you can ignore that. He’s also an annoying, academic horses ass.
Yeah, he liked his position as a post-structural little leftist academic, but Osama bin Laden was not big on the rights of women that Western Feminists embrace at all.
Ward Chruchill’s arguments are full of such holes. I’ll tell you in very simple terms what Ward Churchill is. He’s a leftist wing nut. A free market system is not necessarily the enemy of the third world. I think it’s fairly clear that people of the 3rd world will drive taxis in the United States if given the opportunity to do so. I’d also like to point out that Ward Chruchill pointed to the economic oppression of African-Americans in the United States. I would like to point out that where we have a welfare system that does not check need that one take a drug test to get food stamps, for example, or prohibit violent felons from receiving welfare or food stamps, we have a socialist little system that subsidizes the societal problems in the African American community from obesity to virulent homophobia to gang violence on up.
By the way, this documentary is awful it didn’t at any point show what the conservative counter arguments would have been. It just lets Ward do what Ward does best, be a pompous ass and a leftist wing nut.
This is a joke. You don’t bough to the one Allah, Zarqawi would remove the head of a poor man as much as a rich man.

Film Review: 976-EVIL/976-EVIL 2

976-EVIL was a horror franchise that they only unfortunately made two of, The original 976-EVIL and the straight-to-VHS sequel 976-EVIL 2:The Astral Factor. In the late 80’s, prior to 1-900 becoming the number for pay calls, phone sex/party lines/psychics etc. used the first three digits 976. These two films took to very different feeling takes on the same general premise of a satanic 976 line that grants the user wishes, but takes demonic possession of the user. The sound of the telephone dialing or a phone ringing is the signification in these films that some thing horrific is about to take place. I think the films should really be ripe for a rival of interest as the telephonic seems to play such a critical role in today’s news stories, wiretapping playing into countless media stories such as the News of the World wiretapping scandal. These films are focused on landline phones as the cellphone was a newer phenomenon at the time.
The original 976-EVIL was actually directed by Robert Englund, best known as the actor who played Freddy Kreuger in the Nightmare on Elm St. films. The original 976-EVIL has very much the same feel as the Nightmare on Elm St. films. You have some 80’s punk rock looking teenagers as many horror films of the time had. Spike and Hoax are cousins that live next door-to-each other, Spike is older and fills the stereotypical “cool” role of the time with a motorcycle and a leather jacket, Hoax is more of a nerd with a little bit of a perverted edge to his personality. Hoax’s mother and Spike’s aunt is an extreme evangelical bible thumper patterned probably after Tammy Faye Baker. Hoax is bullied By Spike’s gambling buddies and covets Spike’s girlfriend. First Spike encounters a card with the 976-EVIL number for daily “Horrorscope”, but then it’s little Hoax that gets the card and calls the number. Hoax exacts bloody revenge on Spike’s girlfriend, the bullies, his bible thumping mother. Much like the Nightmare and Elm St films that Englund stared in, We got horrible puns and one-liners through out. That along with the use of stock 80’s character types gives the film a certain camp. However, sequences in which Hoax spies on Spike having sex with his girlfriend through a telescope lend a kind of genuine feeling perversity and pathology to the character of Hoax, and the enactment of his revenge fantasies feels very real.
Jim Wynorski, king of straight-to-video horror and soft-core films was the hand that guided the sequel, and his fetish for large busted women is featured prominently. The dean at a college is arrested for being a serial killer. However, through the 976-EVIL line he is able to send his body out of his prison cell to stalk a large busted blonde co-ed that worked in his office. Spike shows up. It has that odd bad acting that he has in all his films, the southern California setting and the fixation with using large busted actresses, in particular blondes, the Wynorski carries through all his films. 976-EVIL 2 has very much the classic early 90’s straight-to-VHs Feel of other Wynorski films such as Ghoulies 4.
Those are excellent little horror films. People never talk about those much, but those are quite entertaining.