Showing posts with label hippies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hippies. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Does it get any more 1960s than this?

Does it get any more '60s than this 1967 Paul Mauriat LP cover? Inquiring minds, etc., and so on.

My gut reaction is probably not . . . which opens up all kinds of possibilities, being that this is an easy-listening album, not to mention visions of middle-aged Hef wannabes sporting ascots and wildly age-inappropriate garb. Which, of course, argues strongly for this being the most '60s thing ever.

On the other hand, I was 6, my parents had not progressed past 1955, and they made me get a crew cut. Complete with Butch wax.

So my opinion on this might be completely worthless. Alas.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

The truth-telling properties of agitprop


When pro-life propagandists seek to condemn Planned Parenthood by tying it to Occupy Wall Street, it says nothing about America's biggest abortion enthusiast and everything about how unserious advocates for "life" have become.

It says everything about how utterly fatuous my side of "the culture war" has become.

For God's sake, you can make a million reasoned, devastating critiques of the philosophy and shady history behind Planned Parenthood, a group founded upon the same principles that gave us Adolf Hitler's "master race" lunacy. Of course,
LifeNews.com did none of that.

Why focus on eugenics, profiting from the misery of disadvantaged women and horny teen-agers and serving as the chief logisticians of America's long march toward Gomorrah when you can slam them for tangentially associating with hippies who allegedly shit in the park.


That's right, Planned Parenthood deserves your opprobrium and outrage because it is trying to latch onto the meme of the moment, Occupy Wall Street. It, in turn, is to be judged by reports that some of its more eccentric enthusiasts . . . are shitting in the park. And by reports that some of its more lewd enthusiasts pleasure themselves.

In the park.


OK, I can see why Planned Parenthood might be all over that last one, but still. . . .


LISTEN, I am a Catholic. Despite the best efforts of some who lead my church, I still believe what it has proclaimed for 2,000 years. Among those sacred proclamations is this one -- all human life is sacred.

All human life must be defended, particularly that of the weakest members of society, and you don't get any more defenseless than a fetus.

Basic biology tells us that life begins at conception.
If not then, when?

Common sense tells us that a Homo sapiens fetus is a human being. And if you don't think a human being is the same thing as a person, you have just entered the philosophical bizarro world of those who would enslave Africans and murder Jews.

So there's that argument to be made against the United States' leading abortion provider -- Planned Parenthood. It's sound, it's simple and it's politically agnostic. It's hard to go wrong condemning an organization for methodically cheapening human life . . . via multiple methods . . . for money.
Including a nice chunk of your tax dollars.

LifeNews.com could have done that Wednesday. Instead, it blogged this:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has become the subject of public skepticism after numerous well-documented cases of anti-Semitism, sexual assault, drug abuse, public masturbation, public defecation, vandalism and violence. Among the movement’s supporters and sponsors are the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, Socialist Party USA, Industrial Workers of the World, International Bolshevik Tendency, Marxist Student Union, 9/11 Truth groups and more.

The fact that Planned Parenthood would encourage its supporters to attend a rally “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement” despite the widely known abuses taking place at Occupy sites and ties to such disreputable organizations, just further calls into question Planned Parenthood’s credibility. It’s unconscionable that an organization, which receives millions of American tax dollars each year, would encourage supporters to rally alongside groups like the American Nazi Party.

Additionally alarming is that by participating in a rally in solidarity with the nationwide Occupy movement, Planned Parenthood, which purports to be pro-woman, has turned a blind eye to widespread cases of sexual assault at Occupy sites. On Sunday, a 24-year old Occupy Dallas protester was arrested after sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl.
ADDITIONALLY ALARMING is that some vocal pro-life supporters have been clergymen accused of molesting minors. We always knew those damned pro-lifers were up to no damned good, right?

And commies and Nazis are trying to latch onto something that's much more an abused public's primal scream than it is a political movement?
Who'd have thought such a thing? Let's immediately demand that Occupy Wall Street form a coherent national leadership council for the express purpose of formally disavowing itself from every nut drawn to a protest like a moth is to a light bulb.

Or not.

You see, a pro-life movement far more devoted to Republican politics than redeeming a lost culture -- or saving babies . . . and their mothers -- needs some useful idiots with which to tar Occupy Wall Street.
So it then can tar Planned Parenthood for being a moth. Really?

I mean, really?


Actually, as I read the
LifeNews.com screed, I couldn't quite figure out what the main target was -- Planned Parenthood or Occupy Wall Street itself. That I could ask that question gives me its answer.

Are some pro-lifers a lot more worried about Occupy Wall Street than Planned Parenthood? Is much of the American pro-life movement just whoring itself out to principalities and powers . . . and the GOP?

Does a hippie shit in the park?

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Oily rags waiting for a lit match


Violent Marxist Revolution Now Guy, meet Andrew Breitbart and the Water the Tree of Liberty People.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right . . . here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Who knew Gerry Rafferty was a prophet?

Ultimately, all of life is a big version of a college Free Speech Alley. Of course, this is no debating society or bitch session in the sheltered world of the American university.
No, this s*** done got real.

This is the America of soaring unemployment and political warfare. This is the America where dreams go to die and outrage comes to live.

In this Era of Ill Will, where massive consumerist appetites and burgeoning corporate greed face off with minuscule wallets and fading hope for the future, something's gotta give. We don't know just yet what that will be.

But something will.

And some freak show on the fringes -- either one -- is just waiting to throw a lit match into a pile of oily rags.



CONTRARY to the propaganda on the right, the Occupy Wall Street people aren't just a collection of angry Marxists, anarchists and free spirits looking for an excuse to take off their clothes. From what I can see, there are a lot of "normal" people out there, too -- folks who tried to play by the rules and got burned by a system with an ace up its sleeve.

Their dignity is under assault, their checking accounts are depleted, and their options are few amid the Great Recession. It is them I feel for. I feel for the eccentrics, too -- just more in a
"That's just Junior. Don't hurt him -- he's odd, but he's harmless" kind of way.

Now here's what I fear.

Some Angry Marxist Guy -- or maybe some Breitbart vigilante, some self-appointed defender of capitalism and Americanism -- is going to do something stupid. And then some cop is going to do something stupid.


And then some ordinary Joe -- peacefully taking it to the streets because the street is all that's left for the redress of grievances -- is going to be the one killed by the cop's stupidity.

I remember the '60s and how cities burned after just such a scenario. Think of what could happen in this
tinderbox of a country we've built for ourselves, where those at the top have everything to lose and too many down below have nothing left to lose.

DO YOU think that a country in which "terminating" defenseless fetuses is a constitutional right and
"Let him die!" passes for somebody's health-care policy isn't much up for an ideology-driven bloodbath between the able-bodied? You'd better think again. It's in our DNA, both as Americans and members of a woefully fallen human race.

All it takes is 1 percent to start a fire that consumes the other 99.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Harry Reasoner's Wild Kingdom


We travel to the undulating landscape of San Francisco, where our intrepid CBS television newsman Harry Reasoner is on the trail of the mysterious hippie.

I'll stay here in the Impala to safeguard our supply of narrow ties and gray woolen suits. Meanwhile, Harry is instructing our Haight-Ashbury guide on our game plan for luring a pack of hippies to our camera position. Let's listen in on what Harry is saying to tracker Warren Wallace:
"Well, it's going to be tricky to snare one, Warren. Usually, they can smell Establishment at a great distance, and they'll run away.

"But I estimate that if we can bait a trap with enough incense and cigarettes . . . oh . . . and munchies -- and if you stand off to the side and start yelling . . . and the exact wording is important, here, Warren . . . if you start yelling, 'Sunflower scored some really good
[BEEEEEEP!], man' . . . I think we can snare one or two."
FAST FORWARDING from 1967 to 2010, we get to pass judgment on the completely unhip and slightly bemused Reasoner's conclusions about his encounter with the wild hippies amid the coastal hill country of the Bay Area.

And you know what? For a clueless, tragically square old fart, it would seem Harry Reasoner had the hippies' number.

Because the Age of Aquarius remains just another pipe dream, and Better Enlightenment Through Chemicals was just another (dis)illusion.

And the hippies? They ended up selling out to The Man, of course.

COULD IT have been any other way? Harry was right . . .
such a waste.

Dissent was in order. New ideas were in order. The Establishment was corrupt. And what was the great rebellion against establishmentarian rot? Tuning in. Turning on. Dropping out.

That worked out so well for us all.

Well, at least the music was groovy. Maaaaaaan.