Uncle Tupelo's original lineup (c. 1991)—Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn.
(Click on title to play video)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Today's Tune: Uncle Tupelo- No Depression (Live 1992)
Here's a salute to all those who had a hand in producing one of my all-time favorite magazines..."No Depression"...hmmm...with the news of the magazine's demise I am now plenty depressed.
Uncle Tupelo's original lineup (c. 1991)—Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn.
(Click on title to play video)
Uncle Tupelo's original lineup (c. 1991)—Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn.
(Click on title to play video)
Slump takes down magazine
Changes in the recording industry prove fatal for roots-music chronicle No Depression
By David Menconi,
Raleigh News & Observer Staff Writer
This week's announcement that No Depression magazine was shutting down took most of its fans by surprise. The bi-monthly magazine, which helped define as well as popularize alternative-country music, will end a 13-year run with its May/June issue.
"I feel gobsmacked," says Raleigh's Phyllis Gordon, a subscriber for nearly a decade and one of No Depression's many Triangle readers. "This is really a shock. It's like finding out your best friend has moved to China."
All sorts of metaphors have been flying around since Tuesday's announcement. The publishers cite declining record-company advertising revenue as the primary reason for the shutdown. But the magazine's folding is also a sign of the changing habits of music buyers, especially younger ones.
"It's like one of my favorite bands is calling it quits, only this time I'm sort of in the band," says Rick Cornell, one of several local writers who regularly contributes to No Depression. (Full disclosure: I am another.)
No Depression began in Seattle in 1995, named for the Carter Family song "No Depression in Heaven" (covered in 1990 by the pioneering alternative-country band Uncle Tupelo) and an early online music discussion group. The magazine frequently covered North Carolina acts, starting with its first issue.
I did a short feature on the Raleigh band Whiskeytown for that first issue, after spending a memorable evening trying to interview frontman Ryan Adams at the Berkeley Café. The interview ended prematurely when a drunk calling himself "Kenneth From Nashville" began making threats and the police showed up, triggering an all-night standoff -- the first and last time I've ever had an interview cut short by third-party psychosis.
No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock thought this was so amusing that he printed the interview and back story under the headline, "A short interview's journey into hell." Over the next few years, 6 String Drag, Jolene, the Backsliders, Flat Duo Jets and Jim Lauderdale were among the North Carolina acts to score full-length features in No Depression, gaining nationwide exposure at a time when that was hard to come by. Even in the Internet age, getting a feature in the magazine remains a coup.
"When I first talked to the Avett Brothers about managing them, the game plan I presented had getting a story in No Depression as a main goal," says Dolph Ramseur, manager of the Concord-based band. "That was a big point for us. No Depression always felt like a punk-rock fanzine, but covering roots music. This is terrible news, really sad."
From Willie to Wilco
No Depression always had influence beyond its modest circulation of about 30,000 copies.
"It's been like the Bible for that style of music," says longtime subscriber Molly Flynn of Raleigh. "It's hard to imagine it gone."
The magazine began as an attempt to find common ground between classic old-school country and young upstarts. So it covered Nickel Creek as well as Ralph Stanley, Willie Nelson as well as Wilco -- plus choice historical obscurities, such as the long-forgotten R&B singer Little Miss Cornshucks.
In the process, No Depression became a brand. When the soundtrack to 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" unexpectedly sold 7 million copies and won an album-of-the-year Grammy Award, the mainstreaming of No Depression's alternative country was at hand.
"Things get taken for granted as time goes by, and I don't think people remember what a void No Depression stepped into in 1995," says Fred Mills, managing editor of the competing music magazine Harp. "What stands out to me is that they were able to very deftly draw a direct line from Johnny Cash to the Replacements. And this all happened pre-MySpace, long before blogs and all that."
Untimely move
In 2000, No Depression's connection to North Carolina became more direct when Blackstock moved to Durham (co-editor Grant Alden now lives in Kentucky, while co-publisher/co-owner Kyla Fairchild is still in Seattle). Blackstock returned to the Seattle area a few years later before coming back and buying a house in Mebane last fall -- which makes the timing of the magazine's shutdown about as unfortunate as it could possibly be.
But as outlined in the "publishers' note" released Tuesday, the principals don't have much choice. While increasing paper and postal costs are factors, the single biggest reason is the decline of the U.S. record industry.
Album sales in America have declined 36 percent this decade, from a high of 785 million in 2000 to 500 million last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As a result, record labels have drastically cut their print-advertising budgets.
No Depression's advertising revenue has declined even faster than U.S. album sales -- down 36 percent in two years -- and the pace is picking up, pushing the magazine's page counts lower. At 80 pages, the March/April issue is just half the length of the same issue in 2004.
"It became apparent at the start of this year that things had changed," Blackstock says. "When we only had enough advertising for 80 pages in March/April, which is always one of our biggest issues, we knew we had a serious problem that would not balance out if we kept going into the future."
As a small business, No Depression doesn't have the deep pockets to hang on and hope for a turnaround. Reading the writing on the wall, Blackstock and his partners opted to shut down rather than risk going into debt or bankruptcy. No Depression's Web site will continue at nodepression.net, although not on the same scale as the magazine.
Of course, No Depression's demise is indicative of larger trends beyond the magazine, record and advertising industries. Shifting consumer interests also enter into the equation, especially those of younger adults.
"The 12-to-34 demographic gets their music on iTunes, their videos on YouTube, their friends on Facebook," says Karen Albritton, president of the Raleigh marketing firm Capstrat. "Do we really expect them to get their entertainment news in print? Advertisers chase trends, and right now the trend is online."
That leaves niche publications of all kinds struggling to survive. No Depression probably won't be the last such magazine to go down.
"The ad-revenue thing is very troublesome for all of us," says Harp's Mills. "All the things [No Depression] pointed out about print media, that's all true and it's the canary in the coal mine. Everybody has to adapt to electronic media more rapidly, because we see a lot of advertising shifting. Any magazine not in a position to do that ... Well, they're in trouble."
david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or (919) 829-4759.
News & Observer music critic David Menconi has had a byline in 73 out of 74 issues of No Depression magazine. He is listed as a "contributing editor" on its masthead, but receives no compensation beyond freelance fees for stories published in the magazine.
NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE - A TIMELINE
1995 - Issue No. 1 debuts in the fall, 32 pages long with Son Volt on the cover. Raleigh's Whiskeytown gets a short feature.
1996 - The magazine goes from quarterly to bimonthly with issue No. 5, September-October.
1997 - Whiskeytown appears on the cover of the July-August issue, a full-length feature written by co-editor Peter Blackstock. Whiskeytown is also one of four bands on a "No Depression" concert tour sponsored by the magazine, which has its first 100-page issue.
1998 - "No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music (Whatever That Is)" is published by Nashville-based Dowling Press. It reprises magazine features on the Backsliders and Whiskeytown.
2000 - A January-February feature headlined "Ready for the Country" profiles "five emerging insurgents," two of which are from the Triangle: Trailer Bride and future Grammy nominee Tift Merritt.
2001 - No Depression receives an Utne Magazine award for arts and literature coverage.
2003 - Inside color is added. Page count hits 160 for several issues.
2005 - The September-October issue with Nickel Creek on the cover is the magazine's biggest ever at 176 pages. A second anthology is published, "The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music" (University of Texas Press), in conjunction with the magazine's 10-year anniversary.
2006 - The year's longest issue is 144 pages. Concord's Avett Brothers get their first full-length feature in the March-April issue.
2007 - The page count peaks at 128 in March-April, shrinking to 112 pages the rest of the year.
2008 - Down to 80 pages for the March-April issue, the magazine announces it will cease print publication after its May-June issue.
David Menconi
By David Menconi,
Raleigh News & Observer Staff Writer
This week's announcement that No Depression magazine was shutting down took most of its fans by surprise. The bi-monthly magazine, which helped define as well as popularize alternative-country music, will end a 13-year run with its May/June issue.
"I feel gobsmacked," says Raleigh's Phyllis Gordon, a subscriber for nearly a decade and one of No Depression's many Triangle readers. "This is really a shock. It's like finding out your best friend has moved to China."
All sorts of metaphors have been flying around since Tuesday's announcement. The publishers cite declining record-company advertising revenue as the primary reason for the shutdown. But the magazine's folding is also a sign of the changing habits of music buyers, especially younger ones.
"It's like one of my favorite bands is calling it quits, only this time I'm sort of in the band," says Rick Cornell, one of several local writers who regularly contributes to No Depression. (Full disclosure: I am another.)
No Depression began in Seattle in 1995, named for the Carter Family song "No Depression in Heaven" (covered in 1990 by the pioneering alternative-country band Uncle Tupelo) and an early online music discussion group. The magazine frequently covered North Carolina acts, starting with its first issue.
I did a short feature on the Raleigh band Whiskeytown for that first issue, after spending a memorable evening trying to interview frontman Ryan Adams at the Berkeley Café. The interview ended prematurely when a drunk calling himself "Kenneth From Nashville" began making threats and the police showed up, triggering an all-night standoff -- the first and last time I've ever had an interview cut short by third-party psychosis.
No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock thought this was so amusing that he printed the interview and back story under the headline, "A short interview's journey into hell." Over the next few years, 6 String Drag, Jolene, the Backsliders, Flat Duo Jets and Jim Lauderdale were among the North Carolina acts to score full-length features in No Depression, gaining nationwide exposure at a time when that was hard to come by. Even in the Internet age, getting a feature in the magazine remains a coup.
"When I first talked to the Avett Brothers about managing them, the game plan I presented had getting a story in No Depression as a main goal," says Dolph Ramseur, manager of the Concord-based band. "That was a big point for us. No Depression always felt like a punk-rock fanzine, but covering roots music. This is terrible news, really sad."
From Willie to Wilco
No Depression always had influence beyond its modest circulation of about 30,000 copies.
"It's been like the Bible for that style of music," says longtime subscriber Molly Flynn of Raleigh. "It's hard to imagine it gone."
The magazine began as an attempt to find common ground between classic old-school country and young upstarts. So it covered Nickel Creek as well as Ralph Stanley, Willie Nelson as well as Wilco -- plus choice historical obscurities, such as the long-forgotten R&B singer Little Miss Cornshucks.
In the process, No Depression became a brand. When the soundtrack to 2000's "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" unexpectedly sold 7 million copies and won an album-of-the-year Grammy Award, the mainstreaming of No Depression's alternative country was at hand.
"Things get taken for granted as time goes by, and I don't think people remember what a void No Depression stepped into in 1995," says Fred Mills, managing editor of the competing music magazine Harp. "What stands out to me is that they were able to very deftly draw a direct line from Johnny Cash to the Replacements. And this all happened pre-MySpace, long before blogs and all that."
Untimely move
In 2000, No Depression's connection to North Carolina became more direct when Blackstock moved to Durham (co-editor Grant Alden now lives in Kentucky, while co-publisher/co-owner Kyla Fairchild is still in Seattle). Blackstock returned to the Seattle area a few years later before coming back and buying a house in Mebane last fall -- which makes the timing of the magazine's shutdown about as unfortunate as it could possibly be.
But as outlined in the "publishers' note" released Tuesday, the principals don't have much choice. While increasing paper and postal costs are factors, the single biggest reason is the decline of the U.S. record industry.
Album sales in America have declined 36 percent this decade, from a high of 785 million in 2000 to 500 million last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As a result, record labels have drastically cut their print-advertising budgets.
No Depression's advertising revenue has declined even faster than U.S. album sales -- down 36 percent in two years -- and the pace is picking up, pushing the magazine's page counts lower. At 80 pages, the March/April issue is just half the length of the same issue in 2004.
"It became apparent at the start of this year that things had changed," Blackstock says. "When we only had enough advertising for 80 pages in March/April, which is always one of our biggest issues, we knew we had a serious problem that would not balance out if we kept going into the future."
As a small business, No Depression doesn't have the deep pockets to hang on and hope for a turnaround. Reading the writing on the wall, Blackstock and his partners opted to shut down rather than risk going into debt or bankruptcy. No Depression's Web site will continue at nodepression.net, although not on the same scale as the magazine.
Of course, No Depression's demise is indicative of larger trends beyond the magazine, record and advertising industries. Shifting consumer interests also enter into the equation, especially those of younger adults.
"The 12-to-34 demographic gets their music on iTunes, their videos on YouTube, their friends on Facebook," says Karen Albritton, president of the Raleigh marketing firm Capstrat. "Do we really expect them to get their entertainment news in print? Advertisers chase trends, and right now the trend is online."
That leaves niche publications of all kinds struggling to survive. No Depression probably won't be the last such magazine to go down.
"The ad-revenue thing is very troublesome for all of us," says Harp's Mills. "All the things [No Depression] pointed out about print media, that's all true and it's the canary in the coal mine. Everybody has to adapt to electronic media more rapidly, because we see a lot of advertising shifting. Any magazine not in a position to do that ... Well, they're in trouble."
david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or (919) 829-4759.
News & Observer music critic David Menconi has had a byline in 73 out of 74 issues of No Depression magazine. He is listed as a "contributing editor" on its masthead, but receives no compensation beyond freelance fees for stories published in the magazine.
NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE - A TIMELINE
1995 - Issue No. 1 debuts in the fall, 32 pages long with Son Volt on the cover. Raleigh's Whiskeytown gets a short feature.
1996 - The magazine goes from quarterly to bimonthly with issue No. 5, September-October.
1997 - Whiskeytown appears on the cover of the July-August issue, a full-length feature written by co-editor Peter Blackstock. Whiskeytown is also one of four bands on a "No Depression" concert tour sponsored by the magazine, which has its first 100-page issue.
1998 - "No Depression: An Introduction to Alternative Country Music (Whatever That Is)" is published by Nashville-based Dowling Press. It reprises magazine features on the Backsliders and Whiskeytown.
2000 - A January-February feature headlined "Ready for the Country" profiles "five emerging insurgents," two of which are from the Triangle: Trailer Bride and future Grammy nominee Tift Merritt.
2001 - No Depression receives an Utne Magazine award for arts and literature coverage.
2003 - Inside color is added. Page count hits 160 for several issues.
2005 - The September-October issue with Nickel Creek on the cover is the magazine's biggest ever at 176 pages. A second anthology is published, "The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music" (University of Texas Press), in conjunction with the magazine's 10-year anniversary.
2006 - The year's longest issue is 144 pages. Concord's Avett Brothers get their first full-length feature in the March-April issue.
2007 - The page count peaks at 128 in March-April, shrinking to 112 pages the rest of the year.
2008 - Down to 80 pages for the March-April issue, the magazine announces it will cease print publication after its May-June issue.
David Menconi
Delusions of Grandeur
by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
http://www.humanevents.com
Posted: 02/21/2008
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., pauses as she makes a campaign stop at the Dodge Arenain Hildago, Texas, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
There always has been something delusional about the Clintons' project to make Hillary this country's next commander in chief. Start with the balderdash so frequently exuded through the media that she is, along with her husband, a "rock star." Well, they left the White House like rock stars. They trashed the place.
Yet Hillary, a physically unprepossessing lady on the far side of middle age, is not a rock star. Agreed, when she and her bodyguards enter a room, she turns a lot of heads, but so does a roadside automobile accident or the clumsy waitress who just spilled a warm plate of fettuccine alfredo on a customer. Why have members of the press insisted on claiming that Hillary is a rock star and, more preposterous still, that she possesses "charisma," notwithstanding that she is a pedestrian campaigner with a tin ear for politics?
For that matter, why have members of the press insisted on claiming that the former Boy President is a political genius? The Democratic Party went into decline almost everywhere throughout the republic while he was bemanuring the White House. Truth be known, when Boy Clinton began campaigning for her, her prospects darkened. The stubborn minority of journalists who have remained undeluded by the Clinton legends and aware of the Clinton record recognized the impending danger. All through the spring and summer, I was asked on talk radio and television whether I thought Bill would be active in Hillary's campaign and, if so, whether he would be an asset. Usually, I expressed doubt on both counts. As I point out in my book about his retirement and his attendant designs to return to the White House, "The Clinton Crack-Up," Hillary's staff always has been uneasy about the presence of her big loveable lug on the campaign trail. Anyone who might bother to contemplate his record as a campaigner would recognize that he is poison when he campaigns for others. In 2004, of the 14 fated Democrats he campaigned for, 12 lost.
Delusional, too, are Hillary's boasts that her "experience" is superior to that of Sen. Barack Obama. Actually, the less said about Hillary's experience the better for her. Now, after this week's primary defeats, she is introducing her "experience" theme again by boasting that as president, she will be "ready from Day One." She capitalizes "Day One." Is she telling us that upon entering the White House, she will again fire the apolitical employees at the travel office? Or is she promising a "Filegate" hullabaloo with her opponents' FBI files turning up in White House offices? Will there be billing records appearing and disappearing? Will she preside, as she did in the early 1990s, over a "War Room" to handle Whitewater? Whitewater is old news, Hillary. Get over it!
For Hillary to stress her political experience is about as reckless as it was for the most recent Democratic presidential candidate to stress his war record, knowing that it included easily accessed film of his appearance before Congress denouncing the Vietnam War and blatantly lying about his comrades' combat behavior. Candidate Jean-Francois Kerry fallaciously charged his comrades with committing atrocities, and three decades later, he expected to be elected president. Regarding Hillary's experience, I suspect that the electorate is well-aware of its luridities. As I noted in "The Clinton Crack-Up," when her campaign for the presidency drew near, anywhere between 40 and 50 percent of the electorate were polled saying that they would not vote for her.
I noted those statistics to a mainstream journalist a few months back, and he thought I was exaggerating. All he had to do was consult the polls.
The explanation for Hillary's collapse as a front-runner with a 25 to 35 percent (chose your poll) lead over Sen. Barack Obama is that a small cloud far back in the memories of many Democrats has come forward in their minds with every one of her campaign's blunders. After the early bullying of Obama, the arrival of shady Asian money, the planted questions at an Obama rally, implausible complaints about Obama's kindergarten essay, the racist rhetoric in South Carolina, and now evidence of voting fraud in the New York primary, those little clouds have become thunderclouds. Hundreds of thousands of Democrats do not want to go back to the 1990s.
Perhaps historians will note what I noted not long ago. Obama began to cut into Hillary's lead in late November. That was when he deftly reminded voters of the "1990s" and of the quarrels of "the baby boomers." He wanted to move on, and that meant leaving the Clintons and their episodic apologists in the media forlorn among the vapors of their delusions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Tyrrell is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a political and cultural monthly, which has been published since 1967.
http://www.humanevents.com
Posted: 02/21/2008
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., pauses as she makes a campaign stop at the Dodge Arenain Hildago, Texas, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
There always has been something delusional about the Clintons' project to make Hillary this country's next commander in chief. Start with the balderdash so frequently exuded through the media that she is, along with her husband, a "rock star." Well, they left the White House like rock stars. They trashed the place.
Yet Hillary, a physically unprepossessing lady on the far side of middle age, is not a rock star. Agreed, when she and her bodyguards enter a room, she turns a lot of heads, but so does a roadside automobile accident or the clumsy waitress who just spilled a warm plate of fettuccine alfredo on a customer. Why have members of the press insisted on claiming that Hillary is a rock star and, more preposterous still, that she possesses "charisma," notwithstanding that she is a pedestrian campaigner with a tin ear for politics?
For that matter, why have members of the press insisted on claiming that the former Boy President is a political genius? The Democratic Party went into decline almost everywhere throughout the republic while he was bemanuring the White House. Truth be known, when Boy Clinton began campaigning for her, her prospects darkened. The stubborn minority of journalists who have remained undeluded by the Clinton legends and aware of the Clinton record recognized the impending danger. All through the spring and summer, I was asked on talk radio and television whether I thought Bill would be active in Hillary's campaign and, if so, whether he would be an asset. Usually, I expressed doubt on both counts. As I point out in my book about his retirement and his attendant designs to return to the White House, "The Clinton Crack-Up," Hillary's staff always has been uneasy about the presence of her big loveable lug on the campaign trail. Anyone who might bother to contemplate his record as a campaigner would recognize that he is poison when he campaigns for others. In 2004, of the 14 fated Democrats he campaigned for, 12 lost.
Delusional, too, are Hillary's boasts that her "experience" is superior to that of Sen. Barack Obama. Actually, the less said about Hillary's experience the better for her. Now, after this week's primary defeats, she is introducing her "experience" theme again by boasting that as president, she will be "ready from Day One." She capitalizes "Day One." Is she telling us that upon entering the White House, she will again fire the apolitical employees at the travel office? Or is she promising a "Filegate" hullabaloo with her opponents' FBI files turning up in White House offices? Will there be billing records appearing and disappearing? Will she preside, as she did in the early 1990s, over a "War Room" to handle Whitewater? Whitewater is old news, Hillary. Get over it!
For Hillary to stress her political experience is about as reckless as it was for the most recent Democratic presidential candidate to stress his war record, knowing that it included easily accessed film of his appearance before Congress denouncing the Vietnam War and blatantly lying about his comrades' combat behavior. Candidate Jean-Francois Kerry fallaciously charged his comrades with committing atrocities, and three decades later, he expected to be elected president. Regarding Hillary's experience, I suspect that the electorate is well-aware of its luridities. As I noted in "The Clinton Crack-Up," when her campaign for the presidency drew near, anywhere between 40 and 50 percent of the electorate were polled saying that they would not vote for her.
I noted those statistics to a mainstream journalist a few months back, and he thought I was exaggerating. All he had to do was consult the polls.
The explanation for Hillary's collapse as a front-runner with a 25 to 35 percent (chose your poll) lead over Sen. Barack Obama is that a small cloud far back in the memories of many Democrats has come forward in their minds with every one of her campaign's blunders. After the early bullying of Obama, the arrival of shady Asian money, the planted questions at an Obama rally, implausible complaints about Obama's kindergarten essay, the racist rhetoric in South Carolina, and now evidence of voting fraud in the New York primary, those little clouds have become thunderclouds. Hundreds of thousands of Democrats do not want to go back to the 1990s.
Perhaps historians will note what I noted not long ago. Obama began to cut into Hillary's lead in late November. That was when he deftly reminded voters of the "1990s" and of the quarrels of "the baby boomers." He wanted to move on, and that meant leaving the Clintons and their episodic apologists in the media forlorn among the vapors of their delusions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Tyrrell is founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a political and cultural monthly, which has been published since 1967.
Michelle Obama's America -- and Mine
By Michelle Malkin
New York Post
February 20, 2008
Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. speaks to a crowd of supporters during a campaign rally, Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, in Columbus, Ohio.
(AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
Like Michelle Obama, I am a "woman of color." Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation.
Unlike Michelle Obama, I can't keep track of the number of times I've been proud -- really proud -- of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it.
At a speech in Milwaukee this week on behalf of her husband's Democratic presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama remarked, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."
Mrs. Obama's statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have apparently also been devoid of pride in their country for their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word "change." What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot.
I'm just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We've grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been "hungry for change"? Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent "change" any more than Hillary invented "leadership" or John McCain invented "straight talk."
We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change.
We've lived through two decades' worth of peaceful, if contentious election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about "change" and upheaval, both good and bad.
We were adults through several launches of the space shuttle, in case you were snoozing. And as adults, we've witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned to change the world and succeeded. You want "change"? Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies that have flourished under the best economic system in the world.
If American ingenuity, a robust constitutional republic and the fall of communism don't do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice?
How about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome home ceremony for the troops?
For me, there's the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial.
Every naturalization ceremony I've attended, where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia -- including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors -- my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches, and Salvation Army and Red Cross offices to volunteer.
How about American resilience? Does that not make you proud? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor and determination displayed in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., on September 11, 2001.
I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. In this case, it's what happens when an elite Democratic politician's wife says what a significant portion of the party's base really believes to be the truth: America is more a source of shame than pride.
Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League-educated, she's been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World's Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the 10 World's Best-Dressed Women; and named one of "The Harvard 100" most influential alumni. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But you wouldn't know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping about her and her husband's student loans.
For years, we've heard liberals get offended at any challenge to their patriotism. And so they are again aggrieved and rising to explain away Mrs. Obama's remarks.
Lady Michelle and her defenders protest too much.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
New York Post
February 20, 2008
Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. speaks to a crowd of supporters during a campaign rally, Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, in Columbus, Ohio.(AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
Like Michelle Obama, I am a "woman of color." Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation.
Unlike Michelle Obama, I can't keep track of the number of times I've been proud -- really proud -- of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it.
At a speech in Milwaukee this week on behalf of her husband's Democratic presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama remarked, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."
Mrs. Obama's statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have apparently also been devoid of pride in their country for their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word "change." What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot.
I'm just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We've grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been "hungry for change"? Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent "change" any more than Hillary invented "leadership" or John McCain invented "straight talk."
We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change.
We've lived through two decades' worth of peaceful, if contentious election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about "change" and upheaval, both good and bad.
We were adults through several launches of the space shuttle, in case you were snoozing. And as adults, we've witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned to change the world and succeeded. You want "change"? Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies that have flourished under the best economic system in the world.
If American ingenuity, a robust constitutional republic and the fall of communism don't do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice?
How about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome home ceremony for the troops?
For me, there's the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial.
Every naturalization ceremony I've attended, where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia -- including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors -- my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches, and Salvation Army and Red Cross offices to volunteer.
How about American resilience? Does that not make you proud? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor and determination displayed in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., on September 11, 2001.
I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. In this case, it's what happens when an elite Democratic politician's wife says what a significant portion of the party's base really believes to be the truth: America is more a source of shame than pride.
Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League-educated, she's been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World's Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the 10 World's Best-Dressed Women; and named one of "The Harvard 100" most influential alumni. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But you wouldn't know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping about her and her husband's student loans.
For years, we've heard liberals get offended at any challenge to their patriotism. And so they are again aggrieved and rising to explain away Mrs. Obama's remarks.
Lady Michelle and her defenders protest too much.
Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Today's Tune: Kevin Welch & Kieran Kane- Anna Lise Please
FATS KAPLAN, KIERAN KANE & KEVIN WELCH
(Click on title to play video)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Georgetown U's Wahhabi Front
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
John Esposito
In December 2005, Georgetown University announced receipt of a $20 million gift to endow the school’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, after whom the Center was renamed. The Center’s director, John Esposito, has been known for his vigorous apologetics for Islamic extremism, authoring several books prior to the endowment’s announcement dismissing the global influence of extremist Islamic ideology. Under Esposito’s oversight, the Center has also developed questionable ties to individuals and organizations directly involved in Islamic terrorism. One example of these ties is the joint conference held by the Center with the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) in July 2000. By that time, UASR had long been identified as the political command for HAMAS in the United States, and Esposito’s co-chair for the conference was then-UASR executive director Ahmed Yousef, who fled the country in 2005 to avoid prosecution and currently serves as the spokesman for the HAMAS terrorist organization in Gaza.
As a result of the Saudi funding and terror ties, Rep. Frank Wolf last week directed a letter to Georgetown president John DeGioia expressing his concerns as an alumnus of the university over the activities of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the seeming absence of criticism or discussion by the Center of human rights abuses and denial of religious freedom by the Saudi regime. An article by Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project reporting the contents of Rep. Wolf’s letter also noted Esposito’s long history of defending radical Islam and his vocal support and praise of his self-described “good friend”, convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian.
In fact, there is much more for Rep. Wolf and other Georgetown alumni to be concerned about. Since Prince Alwaleed’s gift, the Center at Georgetown under Esposito’s direction has since become a haven for Muslim Brotherhood-connected scholars and longtime paid representatives of the Saudi Wahhabi regime. Two individuals that have recently been appointed to top positions within the Center, Susan Douglass and Hadia Mubarak, have been active in leadership positions with known front organizations for the international Muslim Brotherhood – identified as such in court documents by the Department of Justice. Douglas, who has additionally been a longtime paid employee of the Saudi regime (discussed below) is listed as the Center’s educational consultant and Mubarak is identified as the senior researcher for the Center. A third staff member is Abdullah Al-Arian, the oldest son and family spokesman for Sami Al-Arian, who is listed as a researcher for the organization.
The appearance of Susan Douglass on the staff of the Center should be of particular concern. As investigative reporter Paul Sperry observed in a 2004 article, Douglass was a longtime instructor at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, VA – a Saudi government-funded institution that has been described by some media outlets as “Terror High”. One recent class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 of joining Al-Qaeda and plotting to kill President Bush. Two other former students have also been convicted of plotting terrorist attacks. As Senator Chuck Schumer observed in a 2005 letter to then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar concerning the school’s troubling record, the school’s former comptroller, Ismail Elbarasse, is a known HAMAS operative and former assistant to designated HAMAS terrorist leader Mousa Abu Marzook. And just a few months ago, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom asked the US Department of State to close the school down as a danger to the country for its open promotion of hatred and religious bigotry in its Saudi curriculum, as reported by the Washington Post. One Post front page article in 2004 describes how children at the school “file into their Islamic studies class, where the textbooks tell them the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.”
During her tenure at the Islamic Saudi Academy, Douglass had a series of textbooks published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), an organization raided by federal law enforcement authorities investigating terror financing as part of Operation Greenquest. The Washington Post reported in 2004 how IIIT was founded with money from Muslim Brotherhood operatives and the Saudi terror funding network. Perhaps coincidentally, Esposito’s “good friend” Sami Al-Arian has been charged with contempt of court for refusing to testify about his terror funding operation’s ties to IIIT. Al-Arian initially claimed there was nothing to testify about, but later changed his story that testifying would put his life in grave danger (his attorneys have yet to explain how testifying about nothing would put him in danger).
But perhaps the most important point concerning Susan Douglass’ past work is her role as the principal researcher and textbook review for the Council on Islamic Education (CIE), which has been pressuring American textbook publishers to revise their respective curricula to promote an extremist and revisionist view of Islam. One CIE campaign was directed at Houghton Mifflin Publishers, which resulted in a number of changes to their public school curriculum, including open promotion of Islam and requiring students to participate in Islamic worship activities. Gilbert Sewall of the American Textbook Council has documented the changes to textbooks resulting from CIE’s efforts, and the changes made to textbooks under CIE’s direction has been criticized by former Secretary of Education William Bennett. One published estimate states that Douglass and CIE have also trained more than 8,000 public school teachers.
It is precisely her role as “educational consultant” at the Georgetown Center that should cause concern. As noted by Stanley Kurtz last July, Georgetown is one of a few universities that receive money from the federal government under Title VI of the Higher Education Act for Middle East Studies centers to develop approved K-12 Middle East curriculum. This program has been used by the Saudis to circumvent educational oversight. Kurtz describes how this end-run works:
The United States government gives money — and a federal seal of approval — to a university Middle East Studies center. That center offers a government-approved K-12 Middle East studies curriculum to America’s teachers. But in fact, that curriculum has been bought and paid for by the Saudis, who may even have trained the personnel who operate the university’s outreach program. Meanwhile, the American government is asleep at the wheel — paying scant attention to how its federally mandated public outreach programs actually work. So without ever realizing it, America’s taxpayers end up subsidizing — and providing official federal approval for — K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under Saudi auspices. Game, set, match: Saudis.
With a directed effort by the Saudis to influence American attitudes by exercising its influence of educational curriculum under this program, it is hardly surprising that Esposito’s Saudi-funded Center would suddenly create an “educational consultant” position to be directly involved in this effort. Nor is it any surprise that the Saudis would turn to one of their own – Susan Douglass – who is a former longtime educational employee of the Saudi regime to oversee their educational efforts at Georgetown.
Then there is Hadia Mubarak, the Center’s “senior researcher”. Not only is Mubarak the former president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), but she is also a former national board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Both organizations were identified last year by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators and as front organizations for the international Muslim Brotherhood in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial.
Ms. Mubarak’s extremist views can be seen in her attacks on Stephen Schwartz, a moderate Muslim leader and director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, for his criticism of Saudi Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood. She was quoted in an article in Church Executive magazine as saying regarding Mr. Schwartz that he maintained a “deep hatred of Islam”, notwithstanding his own Islamic beliefs and leadership in the American Muslim community. Schwartz responded in an article noting Mubarak’s multiple ties and involvement with MSA and CAIR, part of what his organization identifies as key components of the “Wahhabi Lobby” operating in the US. He concludes:
The real message of Ms. Mubarak is the classic Wahhabi spin on Islam. That is, only one interpretation of the religion is acceptable, that propagated by the Saudis, and anybody who disagrees with the Wahhabi doctrine is an enemy to be attacked. With dreadful results, this view of Islam, denying its vital internal diversity, has come to dominate Muslims as well as non-Muslim so-called experts on Islam in the U.S.
Last, but certainly not least, of notable characters on the Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding employee directory is Abdullah Al-Arian, oldest son of convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader and fundraiser, Sami Al-Arian. Abdullah’s uncle, Mazen Al-Najjar, was also detained for three years during the Clinton Administration and later deported from the US for his alleged terrorist ties.
In recent years, Al-Arian has championed his father’s innocence as the family’s chief spokesman, undeterred by his father’s guilty plea to conspiracy to materially support a terrorist organization. During his father’s trial, Abdullah appeared as a character witness along with his sister, claiming that they never heard their father speak of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Apparently, they had never seen the videos of their father fundraising for Islamic Jihad, cursing the United States for its support of Israel, or being introduced by others as the head of Islamic Jihad at terror fundraising events. During his court testimony, the prosecutor questioned Abdullah about his own sympathies for Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, which is the primary financial backer of Islamic Jihad.
Abdullah made national news of his own in July 2001, when he was removed from a meeting at the Old Executive Office Building by the Secret Service, as reported by the New York Times. But more recently he has been semi-famous for his international promotion of the recent Norwegian directed and produced “documentary”, USA vs. Al-Arian, in which he and his family figure prominently. The documentary declares Sami Al-Arian’s innocence and casts Al-Arian and his family as martyrs of freedom and victims of an unjust American terror prosecution (despite Al-Arian’s voluntary guilty plea), a narrative with Abdullah himself has openly promoted. One recent article covering a special premier of the film sponsored by CAIR quotes the younger Al-Arian reflecting on his father’s upcoming deportation and the difficulties of locating a country that will take him. “It's a sad day when you have to leave the U.S. to be free,” Abdullah said.
Confirming the business maxim that “personnel is policy”, we can readily see the extremist and narrow interpretation of Islam promoted by John Esposito and the Georgetown Center as seen by these three staff members. Under Esposito’s direction and since Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s capital endowment, the Center at Georgetown has become an active front for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi Wahhabi regime, which has repeatedly shown its international commitment to using its significant financial resources to gain access and control of respectable private institutions for its own questionable purposes. (As an aside, I have not taken up the issue here of other scholars at Georgetown funded by terror-connected groups, such as IIIT.)
If Rep. Wolf or Georgetown President DiGioia want to know what’s going on at Georgetown Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the version of Islam they’re promoting, they don’t have to look far if they have the will to look.
Fidel Castro: The Teflon Tyrant Resigns
By Humberto FontovaWednesday, February 20, 2008
Last September, Fidel Castro vowed to stay in power until President George W. Bush leaves the White House. Even with his failing health, one would have been hard-pressed to bet against the dictator who outlasted nine U.S. presidents and his great sponsor in the Soviet Union. Castro’s retirement yesterday, in favor of his brother Raul, confirms that he will not be able to keep his word. But to understand his legacy, and its implications for Cuba’s future, one must go back to a promise that Castro made at the dawn of his one-man rule nearly half a century ago.
Upon entering Havana on January 7, 1959, Cuba's new leader Fidel Castro broadcast that promise into a phalanx of microphones. "Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba's problems without spilling a drop of blood." As the jubilant crowd erupted with joy, Castro continued. "Cuban mothers let me assure you that because of me you will never have to cry."
The following day, just below San Juan Hill in eastern Cuba, a bulldozer rumbled to a start, clanked into position, and started pushing dirt into a huge pit with blood pooling at the bottom from the still -twitching bodies of more than a hundred men and boys who'd been machine-gunned without trial on the Castro brothers' orders. Their wives and mothers wept hysterically from a nearby road.
On that very day, the U.K. Observer ran the following headline: "Mr Castro's bearded, youthful figure has become a symbol of Latin America's rejection of brutality and lying. Every sign is that he will reject personal rule and violence."
These two events perfectly symbolize the Fidel Castro phenomenon, even half a century later: Fidel Castro oppresses and kills while issuing a smokescreen of lies not merely devious but downright psycopathic. The worldwide media abandons all pretense as "investigators" or "watchdogs" and adopts a role, not merely as sycophants, but as advertising agency.
By the time of his delirious, deafening, foot-stomping receptions at Harvard Law School and the National Press Club (most of whose members oppose capital punishment) three months later in April 1959, "Mr. Castro's" firing squads had slaughtered 1,168 men - and boys, some as young as 15.
By the time Norman Mailer (another opponent of capital punishment) was hailing Fidel Castro as "the greatest hero to appear in the Americas!" his hero's firing squads had piled up 4,000 corpses and one of 18 Cubans was a political prisoner, an incarceration rate that surpassed Stalin's.
By 1975, when George McGovern (another opponent of capital punishment) was calling him a "very shy and sensitive, a man I regard as a friend," the bullet-riddled bodies of over 10,000 Cubans lay in unmarked graves, and Cuba still held the most political prisoner as a percentage of population on earth, surpassing Nazi Germany's prewar rate by several multiples.
He brought the world closest of anyone to nuclear Armageddon by pleading, begging, and finally trying to trick Nikita Khrushchev into launching a surprise nuclear strike on the U.S. Yet he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Price by Norwegian parliamentarians.
He jailed and tortured at a rate higher than Stalin. Yet Cuba sits on the UN's Human Rights Committee.
His legal code mandates 18 months in prison for anyone overheard cracking a joke about him. Yet Jack Nicholson and Chevy Chase sing his praises.
He abolished habeas corpus while his chief hangman, Che Guevara, declared that “judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We execute from Revolutionary Conviction.” A month later Harvard Law School invited him to address them and erupted in cheers and tumultuous ovations after his every third sentence.
He drove out a higher percentage of Jews from Cuba than Czar Nicholas drove from Russia and Hafez Assad drove from Syria. Yet Shoah Foundation founder Stephen Spielberg considered his dinner with Fidel Castro "the eight most important hours of my life."
He overthrew a black Cuban head of state and replaced his government with one where only nine percent of the ruling Stalinist party is black and where the prison population is 80- 90 percent black. He jailed the longest suffering black political prisoner of modern history. (Eusebio Penalver who suffered longer in Castro's dungeon's than Nelson Mandela suffered in South Africa's.) He sentenced other blacks (Dr Elias Biscet, Jorge Antunez) to 20 year sentences essentially for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in a public square. Yet he's a hero to the Congressional Black Caucus and receives passionate bear hugs from Charlie Rangel.
He twice tried to destroy New York, once with nuclear missiles, the following month by planning to set off 500 kilos of TNT in Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's, and Grand Central Terminal on the year's busiest shopping day. Yet Newsweek magazine hailed him as "The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!" and Time as "The Toast of Manhattan!" referring to the social swirl that engulfed him on a visit to New York in 1995 from the city's best and brightest, including David Rockefeller, Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas, Mort Zuckerman, Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw, and Barbara Walters. According to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, on that visit, Castro received 250 dinner invitations from Manhattan celebrities and power-brokers.
His firing squads murdered pregnant women, his coast guard machine-gunned mothers with their children for trying to escape on rafts, and his regime made Cuban women into the most suicidal in the world, tripling their pre-Revolution suicide rate. Yet Barbara Walters hails "the great health he has brought to Cuba," Andrea Mitchell, referred to him as "an absolutely fascinating figure!" and Diane Sawyer was so overcome in his presence that she rushed up, broke into that toothy smile of hers, wrapped her arms around Castro and smooched him warmly on the cheek.
Over the years a varied assortment of foreign fans and well wishers have showered Castro with accolades.
* "Cuba's Elvis!" -Dan Rather.
* "Castro is the most honest and courageous politician I've ever met! Viva Fidel!" - Jesse Jackson.
* "If you believe in freedom, justice and equality you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!" - Harry Belafonte.
* "Castro is a genius and Cuba is a Paradise!" - Jack Nicholson.
* "One helluva guy!" - Ted Turner.
Sadly, lunacy on the subject of Fidel Castro is hardly confined to the lunatic fringe.
* "Castro has done good things for Cuba." - Colin Powell.
* "Castro threw out an SOB and liberated Cuba's poor." - The late Stephen Ambrose, America's best selling historian.
* The conservative and respected London Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch even editorialized about Castro's "achievements."
Among historical figures Fidel Castro was, hands down, the most effective liar of modern times. His effectiveness was greatly aided by a fawning worldwide media dazzled by his status as the world's pre-eminent symbol of anti-Americanism. With such cachet much could be forgiven, overlooked, ignored or simply falsified. If what we constantly heard and read about Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution in the mainstream media and college textbooks was merely in error it might be less obnoxious. Instead the media/academia clichés usually upend the truth. We get the precise opposite of the truth. Ignorance (usually willful) of conditions in pre-Castro Cuba, of Fidel Castro's background, of U.S.-Cuba relations pre-1960 all contribute to the cliché-ridden Castro legend. With Fidel Castro's burial as a backdrop and the media wallowing in a Castro-cliché orgy let's examine them one at a time, in no particular order of importance.
Cliché no. 1: A plucky Castro succeeded in defying a relentlessly hostile U.S. that worked ceaselessly to topple him.
The Facts: “We ended up getting exactly what we'd wanted all along," wrote Nikita Khrushchev about the Missile Crisis Resolution.
"Security for Fidel Castro's regime and American missiles removed from Turkey. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro [italics mine]. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba."
Henry Kissinger, as Gerald Ford's secretary of state, renewed the pledge.After the Missile Crisis "resolution," Castro's "defiance" of the U.S. took the form of the U.S. Coast Guard and even the British navy (when some intrepid exile freedom fighters moved their operation to the Bahamas) shielding him from exile attacks. Far from "defying" a superpower, Castro hid behind the skirts of two superpowers, plus the British Empire.
Cliché no. 2 : Pre-Castro Cuba was a veritable U.S. colony, greedily exploited by U.S. corporations and by her most notorious gangsters who maintained the hapless island as a sordid casino and bordello. Castro rectified this shameful condition.
The Facts: In 1958, only 7 percent of invested capital in Cuba was American, and less than one-third of Cuba’s sugar output (its main crop) was by U.S. companies. Cuba had a grand total of three gambling Casino's at the time. (Gulfport Mississippi has triple that number today.) Exactly one Havana hotel was mob-owned (compare this to Las Vegas and ask yourselves who demands that Nevada suffer Stalinism to rectify its shameful condition.)
In 1958, Cuba had approximately 10,000 prostitutes. Today an estimated 150,000 ply their trade on the desperate island, many as young as 14.
And to cap it all off: in 1950 more Cubans (out of a population of six million) vacationed in the U.S., than Americans (out of 200 million) vacationed in Cuba. At that time, Cubans didn't come to the U.S. in any great numbers to settle. In fact as a percentage of population, Cuba took in more immigrants (primarily from Europe) in the early 20th century than did the U.S. In the 1950's, when Cubans were perfectly free to emigrate with all their property and U.S. visas were issued for the asking, fewer Cubans lived in the U.S. than Americans lived in Cuba.
Cliché no 3: Fidel Castro overthrew the "U.S. backed" Batista whose patrons and puppeteers went instantly ballistic at his ousting. No sooner had Castro entered Havana than the U.S. started pounding its big stick while waving nary a carrot. This pushed an affronted and innocent Fidel Castro into the arms of mother Russia. The poor man had no choice against such relentless bellicosity and bullying, characterized by the vindictive and ineffective embargo.
The Facts: Former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, Earl T. Smith, during Congressional testimony in 1960, declared flatly: "We put Castro in power." He referred to the U.S. State Department and CIA's role in aiding, both morally and materially, the Castro rebels, to their pulling the rug out from under Batista with an arms embargo, and finally to the U.S. order that Batista vacate Cuba. Ambassador Smith knew something about these events because he personally delivered the messages to Batista, who was then denied exile in the U.S.
"Me and my staff were all Fidelistas," boasted Robert Reynolds, the CIA's "Caribbean Desk's specialist on the Cuban Revolution" from 1957-1960. The U.S. gave Castro's regime its official benediction more rapidly than it had recognized Batista's in 1952, and lavished it with $200 million in subsidies.
In August 1959, the liberal U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsal, alerted Castro to a conspiracy against his regime by Cubans. Thanks in part to Ambassador Bonsal's solicitude for a regime then insulting his nation as "a vulture preying on humanity" and poised to steal $2 billion from U.S. stockholders, the anti-Castro plot was foiled, hundreds of the plotters imprisoned or executed, and the regime that three years later came closest to vaporizing many of America's biggest cities (including Bonsal's home) with nuclear missiles, survived.
In 1958, at the very time the U.S. State Dept. and CIA were helping his movement, Castro had written in confidence to a colleague, "War with the U.S. is my true destiny." Castro had sent armed guerrillas to attempt the violent overthrow of four sovereign Latin American countries, confiscated $2 billion in U.S. property, invited in thousands of Soviet military and police agents, kidnapped 50 U.S. citizens from Guantanamo Bay, and jailed and executed several Americans before we lifted a finger against him.
Cliché no. 4. "The Cuban embargo doesn't work. It never succeeded in toppling Castro or even in moderating Castro's policies. It allows the regime to blame "the bully to the north" for its economic failures and thus rally the Cuban people to its side. It's long past time to do away with it."
The Facts: Spanish pollsters conducted a clandestine poll in Cuba last year and found that less than a third of Cubans blame the U.S. "blockade" for their economic plight. The U.S. embargo was reactive not pro-active and came only after Castro stole 5,911 businesses worth $2 billion from U.S. stockholders. This was (and remains) the biggest such heist in history Castro boasted that he'd never repay a penny of what he stole ( the only promise he's ever kept.)
If the embargo "failed" it is simply, because for over 30 years no "embargo" has been in place.
In 1974, Henry Kissinger allowed all foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Cuba. Since most U.S. brand products are available (cheaper) from Mexico, Cuba's tourist and "dollar stores" have long been well-stocked with U.S. products.
But even that avenue is now moot. In the last three years, U.S. companies have done more than $1 billion dollars worth of direct business with Cuba. Currently, the U.S is Cuba's biggest food supplier and fourth biggest import partner. Since 2000, Cuba has been able to buy practically anything it wants from the U.S. -- but only for cash.
What the Castro regime craves (along with the U.S. agricultural lobby and Cuba’s long queue of stiffed creditors) is U.S. sales to Cuba on credit and guaranteed by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (i.e., U.S. taxpayers.) Cuba has defaulted on such credits whenever offered, most recently from France’s own Ex-Im bank, COFACE. Cuba’s external debt, primarily to Russia, Venezuela and Europe, approaches $40 billion and her credit rating according to Dun & Bradstreet is below Somalia's. Via Congressional lobbying, stilted mainstream media stories and UN votes, all of the above parties ( for obvious reasons) urge the U.S. taxpayer to come to their rescue. They refer to this as “lifting the Cuban embargo.”
The U.S. taxpayer is among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by Castro. As such the so-called embargo has been a resounding success.
Cliché no. 5. Cuba was a wretched place before Castro. The Castro regime's minuses in political liberties are more than offset by its plusses in heath care, literacy, nourishment, etc. The London Times described pre-Castro Cuba as "an impoverished Caribbean island." The New York Times termed Cuba's economy in 1958 as "Near-Feudal."
The Facts: A UNESCO report on Cuba circa 1957 stated: "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class.The U.S. Department of Commerce Guide for Businesses from 1956 stated: “Cuba is not an underdeveloped country." In 1958, that "impoverished Caribbean island" had a higher per capita income than Austria and Japan and Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. Cuba also had the hemisphere’s lowest inflation rate and her peso was always equal in value with the U.S. dollar.
Cuba also had more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain and lower infant mortality than France and Germany the 13th lowest in the world, in fact. Today, Cuba's infant mortality rate despite the hemisphere's highest abortion rate which skews this figure downward is 34th from the top. So, relative to the rest of the world, Cuba's health care has worsened under Castro and a nation with a formerly massive influx of European immigrants needs machine guns, water cannons and Tiger sharks to keep it's people from fleeing. In 1958, 80 percent of Cubans were literate and Cuba spent the most per capita on public education of any nation in Latin America. In 1958, Cubans had the third highest protein consumption in Latin America, more Televisions per capita than any European nation and more autos per capita than Japan and half of Europe.
Since 1962, a Cuban's government-mandated food rations are lower than those mandated for Cuban slaves by the Spanish King in 1842. The average salary is $10 a month and oxcarts are envied as a mode of transportation in Cuba's countryside. The only people on earth with fewer cell phones per capita than Cubans live in Papua, New Guinea.
All of this after the Soviets lavished Castro with the equivalent of six Marshall Plans, and pumped not into a war-ravaged continent of 300 million but into an island of 6.5 million who formerly enjoyed everything mentioned above.
Regarding Cuba's “near-feudal countryside" as The New York Times described it: According to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization, the average daily wage for an agricultural worker in Cuba in the 1950's was higher than in France, Belgium, Denmark, or West Germany. Also, far from huge latifundia dominating the agricultural landscape, the average Cuban farm in 1958 was actually smaller than the average farm in the U.S .
Cliché no. 6. The Bay of Pigs was a “fiasco” because Cubans in Cuba overwhelmingly supported the Castro regime and were not motivated to fight it as they had the Batista regime.
The Facts: Initially, thinking the moment of liberation had arrived, entire battalions of Castro’s militia surrendered en masse to the invaders. Only when it became obvious that the invaders had been abandoned and no U.S. military support would be forthcoming did the ring close. Even then, one U.S. jet flying over the beachhead on a reconnaissance mission briefly halted most of the firing from Castro’s forces. After the battle, Fidel Castro himself fumed at the poor fighting spirit of his troops.
More facts: A ferocious anti-communist guerrilla war raged in the Cuban countryside from 1960 to 1966 that involved t10 times the number of rebels who ever fought against Batista. Raul Castro himself admitted that his troops, militia, and Soviet advisers were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the freedom-fighters. Tens of thousands of troops, scores of Soviet advisors, and squadrons of Soviet tanks, helicopters, and flame-throwers finally extinguished the lonely Cuban freedom-fight Everyplace else on earth the liberal media/academia axis refers to such a thing as "an insurgency," and is proof that “the people” oppose their rulers.
"Fool me once," they say. "Shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you." Once in exile, the Cuban refugees pouring out of Cuba adopted the desperate role of Dorothy's dog Toto, tugging the curtain open and urging the world to avert their gaze from the smoke and mirrors and please, please! pay attention to that man behind it.
Results have been -- to put it delicately -- "mixed." Even in death the mainstream media remains in awe of The Great and Powerful Fidel. Castro's primary detractors lacked the proper cachet. Few ethnic groups have ever hit these shores carrying more unfashionable baggage. Not that they carried much. Most landed with the clothes on their backs, their every possession stolen by Castro. Then these people compounded the curse tenfold by bounding into the middle class in one generation and by becoming the most solidly Republican ethnic bloc in U.S. history. From 71 to 82 percent of Cuban-Americans vote Republican. So the usual taboos regarding the discussion of ethnic groups vanish when discussing Americans of Cuban heritage. Georgetown professor and Democratic presidential adviser, Norman Birnbaum referred to them as "Those truly reprehensible Miami Cubans." During the Elian Gonzalez circus Bryant Gumbel referred to Cuban demonstrators as "disgusting" and The New Republic and Nation writer Alexander Cockburn recommended "nuking" Miami's Little Havana.
Yet, no hysterics erupted from the usual quarters. None of the brouhaha that hounded John Rocker, Jimmy the Greek, and Mel Gibson ensued. All Professional sniffers and snouters in matters regarding "ethnic sensitivity" remained deafeningly mum.
So, what now for Cuba? Fidel's successor, Raul, was the one who gave the "FUEGO!" order for the massacre mentioned at the beginning of this article. "Meet the new boss," wrote Pete Townsend, "same as the old boss."
You get the picture. Given the temper of the times, and given his lackluster personality, Raul is unlikely to gather the same media plaudits as his brother. But he's already being described as "pragmatic," "efficient," "a skillful manager," "more open," etc. by the mainstream media.
And, based on their track record, why wouldn't you believe them?
Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Visit http://www.hfontova.com/
Mark Steyn: Obama the Muzak Messiah of the pseudo-revolution
Orange County Register
Saturday, February 16, 2008
These days, Obama worshippers file two kinds of columns. The first school is well-represented by Ezra Klein, the elderly bobby-soxer of The American Prospect:
"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."
Er, OK, if you say so.
It seems to me that Barack Obama is the triumph of flesh, color and despair over word – that's to say, he offers an appealing embodiment of identity politics plus a ludicrously despairing vision of contemporary America (sample: "Trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart") that triumphs over anything so prosaic as a policy platform.
On the other hand, if you're running for president not as an unexceptional first-term senator with a thin resume but as the new Messiah, the new Kennedy, the new Gandhi, the new Martin Luther King, you can't blame folks for leaping ahead to the next stage in the mythic narrative. Around the world, a second instant subgenre has sprung up in which commentators speculate how long it will be before some deranged Christian-fundamentalist neo-Nazi gun-nut deprives America of its fleeting wisp of glory. Setting a new standard for fevered, slavering Obama assassination porn, Earl MacRae warned Canadians in The Ottawa Sun:
"To be black and catapulting toward the presidency on charm, intellect and popularity is unacceptable to the racist paranoid and scary in America the beautiful. … They do not want to hear that he is a better American than they are, these right-wing extremist fascists in the land of America who no doubt believe it's God's will Barack Obama not get to the White House, no method of deterrence out of bounds, in their zealotry to protect and perpetuate Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mom's apple pie and the cross of Jesus in every home."
By this point, Mr. MacRae wasn't so much warming to his theme as typing up his first draft for Miramax:
"Barack Obama is waving his arms. The crowd is cheering. … I see Barack Obama, one minute smiling, the people crying his name. I see Barack Obama grab his chest and his eyes widen and his mouth opens, and the crowd screams as Barack Obama, black candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, falls to the ground, dead, an assassin's bullet inside him."
Er, OK.
Right now Obama's more at risk of being taken out by traces of polonium-210 left in his hotel by a Clinton operative than by Roy Rogers saddling up for Jesus. Every president is a target for assassination, though George W. Bush is unique in having been the subject of explicit murder fantasies by so many non-right-wing nonextremist impeccably reasonable artists (the British movie "Death Of A President"; the novella "Checkpoint" by Nicholson Baker) and even the occasional straightforward exhortation: "On Nov. 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses," wrote Charlie Brooker in London's Guardian in 2004. "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?"
Well, wherever they are, they're probably saying: "Why bring us into it? When Lee Harvey decided it was time for JFK to get assassinated, he didn't sit around whining, 'John Wilkes Booth, where are you now that I need you?' Get off your butt and do it yourself, you big Euro-ninny." Ah, but for the armchair insurgents of the Western Left, the vicarious frisson is more than delicious enough. Anything else would interfere with dinner plans.
The Bush assassination fantasies are concocted by his political opponents and at least arise from his acts – invading the world; slaughtering 14 million Iraqi civilians; shredding the Constitution. By contrast, the Obama assassination porn is written by his worshippers and testifies to one of the most palpable features of the senator's campaign – its faintly ersatz quality, its determination to appropriate Camelot and every other mythic narrative.
A few days ago, a local news team went to shoot some film at Obama's Houston campaign headquarters. Behind the desks of the perky gals answering the phones were posters of Che Guevara and Cuban flags. Do Obama's volunteers even know who Che is? Apart from being a really cool guy on posters and T-shirts, like James Dean or Bart Simpson. I doubt it. They're pseudo-revolutionaries. Very few people in America want a real revolution: Life is great, this is a terrific country, with unparalleled economic opportunities.
Che flag in Obama office.
To be sure, it's a tougher break if you have the misfortune to be the victim of one of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs or a decrepit inner-city grade school with a higher per-student budget than the wealthiest parts of Switzerland. But even so, to be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Not even Obama supporters want real revolution: Ask the many peoples around the world for whom revolution means not a lame-o Sixties poster above your desk but the carnage and horror of the day before yesterday.
Poor mean, vengeful Hillary, heading for a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express, has a point. Barack Obama is an elevator Muzak dinner-theater reduction of all the glibbest hand-me-down myths in liberal iconography – which is probably why he's a shoo-in. The problems facing America – unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies – require tough solutions, not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes. But, unlike the whose-turn-is-it? GOP, Mrs. Clinton's crowd generally picks the new kid on the block: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. I wonder if Hillary Rodham, Goldwater Girl of 1964, ever wishes she'd stuck with her original party.
©MARK STEYN
The Obama Delusion
By Robert Samuelson
Newsweek
February 20, 2008
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a rally Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008 in Houston.
(AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
WASHINGTON -- It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.
As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.
The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African-American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.
But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.
By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:
-- Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).
-- Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.
-- Expand the child care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality after-school programs."
-- Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."
Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goodie-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing him of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim.
A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.
Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."
Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees -- shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.
Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscurity. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.
The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.
Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
Newsweek
February 20, 2008
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a rally Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008 in Houston.(AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
WASHINGTON -- It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.
As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.
The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African-American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.
But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.
By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:
-- Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).
-- Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.
-- Expand the child care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality after-school programs."
-- Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."
Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goodie-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing him of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim.
A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.
Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."
Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees -- shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.
Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscurity. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.
The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.
Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
End of The Great Depression
By David Menconi
On The Beat, Raleigh News & Observer
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Given how many of its problems are self-inflicted, it's easy to adopt an attitude of schadenfreude about the record industry's ongoing free fall. But not everybody feeling the pain is an overpaid muckety-muck, and the independent-music community is taking a major hit: No Depression, the award-winning bimonthly magazine that covers alternative-country and its variants, is going out of business after the May/June issue. And the primary reason for its demise is that record-label print advertising has plummeted as much as compact disc sales, even while the magazine's circulation has held steady at about 30,000.
At this point, a few disclosures are in order. No Depression co-editor/Mebane resident Peter Blackstock has been one of my closest friends for more than 20 years. I'm also a regular contributor, going all the way back to a feature on Raleigh's Whiskeytown in issue #1, Fall 1995.
North Carolina has always been a No Depression stronghold, with Chris Stamey, the Avett Brothers, Caitlin Cary, Thad Cockrell, Kenny Roby, Chatham County Line and Roman Candle among the local acts to turn up in its pages in recent years. Beyond those local ties, however, No Depression's demise seems like an ominous warning for music journalism and the magazine business. Other music magazines are struggling, too, and No Depression probably won't be the last niche publication to go under this year.
We'll have more about the end of No Depression online and in-print. For now, click through to see the publishers' note that will appear in the March/April issue, which details the reasons why.
From the Editors of No Depression:
Barring the intercession of unknown angels, you hold in your hands the next-to-the-last edition of No Depression we will publish. It is difficult even to type those words, so please know that we have not come lightly to this decision.
In the thirteen years since we began plotting and publishing No Depression, we have taken pride not only in the quality of the work we were able to offer our readers, but in the way we insisted upon doing business. We have never inflated our numbers; we have always paid our bills (and, especially, our freelancers) on time. And we have always tried our best to tell the truth.
First things, then: If you have a subscription to ND, please know that we will do our very best to take care of you. We will be negotiating with a handful of magazines who may be interested in fulfulling your subscription. That is the best we can do under the circumstances. Those circumstances are both complicated and painfully simple. The simple answer is that advertising revenue in this issue is 64 percent of what it was for our March-April issue just two years ago. We expect that number to continue to decline.
The longer answer involves not simply the well-documented and industrywide reduction in print advertising, but the precipitous fall of the music industry. As a niche publication, ND is well-insulated from reductions in, say, GM’s print advertising budget; our size meant they weren’t going to buy space in our pages, regardless.
On the other hand, because we’re a niche title we are dependent upon advertisers who have a specific reason to reach our audience. That is: record labels. We, like many of our friends and competitors, are dependent upon advertising from the community we serve.
That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print.
The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we’ve been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.
Then there’s the economy...
The cumulative toll of those forces makes it increasingly difficult for all small magazines to survive. Whatever the potentials of the web, it cannot be good for our democracy to see independent voices further marginalized. But that’s what’s happening. The big money on the web is being made, not surprisingly, primarily by big businesses.
ND has never been a big business. It was started with a $2,000 loan from Peter’s savings account (the only monetary investment ever provided, or sought by, the magazine). We have five more or less full-time employees, including we three who own the magazine. We have always worked from spare bedrooms and drawn what seemed modest salaries.
What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we’d love to tell you about.
And we have taken great pride in being one of the last bastions of the long-form article, despite the received wisdom throughout publishing that shorter is better. We were particularly gratified to be nominated for our third Utne award last year.
Our cards are now on the table.
Though we will do this at greater length next issue, we should like particularly to thank the advertisers who have stuck with us these many years; the writers, illustrators, and photographers who have worked for far less than they’re worth; and our readers: You. Thank you all. It has been our great joy to serve you.
GRANT ALDEN
PETER BLACKSTOCK
KYLA FAIRCHILD
Posted at 11:40 am by David Menconi in music
Who looks worse - Belichick or Goodell?
By Joe Starkey
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
New England Patriots chairman and owner Robert Kraft, right, and National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell chat before the Super Bowl XLII football game between the Patriots and New York Giants at University of Phoenix Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008 in Glendale, Ariz.
AP photo
Mr. Tough Guy. That was Roger Goodell last spring.
Following his first season as NFL commissioner, Goodell vowed to refurbish the league's image. He put some meat to his promise by issuing a series of player suspensions.
Nobody messed with The Commish. People praised him -- but their compliments look silly today, amid the ever-expanding saga that is Spygate.
Goodell has become as big a story as Bill Belichick in this matter and looks every bit as bad.
Goodell's the one who ordered the destruction of evidence documenting the New England Patriots' illegal videotaping of opposing coaches' signals.
Goodell's the one, according to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who levied the penalty before receiving all the evidence of New England's activities.
That penalty -- fines plus the forfeiture of a first-round pick -- looked ridiculously lame compared to Goodell's draconian treatment of wayward players. He didn't suspend Belichick and didn't even have the guts to take New England's top pick (No. 7 overall) but rather their lower first-round pick.
Before all this, back when Mr. Tough Guy was doling out suspensions like Skittles, The Washington Post quoted David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at Southern Cal, thusly:
"(Goodell) has succinctly delivered a message of what the NFL stands for and what it expects. He understands that falling short on these issues would hurt his brand and hurt the owners' ability to generate revenues. He understands what it would mean if the sponsors came to regard the NFL as 'The Longest Yard.' "
What would it mean if the sponsors learned of a devious coach cheating his way to Super Bowl wins?
That might be a gross exaggeration, but there is so much we don't know about Belichick's operation. We'd likely know more if the NFL had conducted a serious investigation and, you know, kept the evidence. You have to wonder why Belichick continued the practice for so long if it wasn't providing a competitive advantage.
Belichick has denied a report he had a St. Louis Rams workout filmed the day before the 2002 Super Bowl, but why should anybody believe him?
Here's another beauty of a quote from the same Post story.
Remember, this was long before Spygate.
"(Goodell) understands, like we in ownership understand, that the American public wants to become emotionally involved in our teams and players," Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. "That's the reason these companies spend the money they do and these (television) networks spend the money they do. Certain behavior isn't tolerated by the American public."
Like cheating?
Thank goodness Specter came along. Only a person in a position of power could have prevented Goodell from burying this issue. After his meeting with Goodell last week, Specter said he was told Belichick's cheating goes back to 2000, a tidbit Goodell had conveniently avoided mentioning in public.
Look, Specter probably has questionable motives. He's probably grandstanding. But he also has become football's answer to Jose Canseco - the wacko who blew the whistle.
Somebody had to do it.
And if you think the NFL would look bad if Spygate reached a courtroom or the Senate floor, imagine somebody with clout pressing Mr. Tough Guy on players and their pharmaceutical habits.
Here's what Goodell said when this reporter asked him, in October, 2006, if the NFL has a problem with performance-enhancing drugs:
"I don't think it's a problem."
That was funnier than anything Burt Reynolds said in "The Longest Yard."
Joe Starkey is a sports writer for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached at jstarkey@tribweb.com.
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
New England Patriots chairman and owner Robert Kraft, right, and National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell chat before the Super Bowl XLII football game between the Patriots and New York Giants at University of Phoenix Stadium on Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008 in Glendale, Ariz.
AP photo
Mr. Tough Guy. That was Roger Goodell last spring.
Following his first season as NFL commissioner, Goodell vowed to refurbish the league's image. He put some meat to his promise by issuing a series of player suspensions.
Nobody messed with The Commish. People praised him -- but their compliments look silly today, amid the ever-expanding saga that is Spygate.
Goodell has become as big a story as Bill Belichick in this matter and looks every bit as bad.
Goodell's the one who ordered the destruction of evidence documenting the New England Patriots' illegal videotaping of opposing coaches' signals.
Goodell's the one, according to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who levied the penalty before receiving all the evidence of New England's activities.
That penalty -- fines plus the forfeiture of a first-round pick -- looked ridiculously lame compared to Goodell's draconian treatment of wayward players. He didn't suspend Belichick and didn't even have the guts to take New England's top pick (No. 7 overall) but rather their lower first-round pick.
Before all this, back when Mr. Tough Guy was doling out suspensions like Skittles, The Washington Post quoted David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at Southern Cal, thusly:
"(Goodell) has succinctly delivered a message of what the NFL stands for and what it expects. He understands that falling short on these issues would hurt his brand and hurt the owners' ability to generate revenues. He understands what it would mean if the sponsors came to regard the NFL as 'The Longest Yard.' "
What would it mean if the sponsors learned of a devious coach cheating his way to Super Bowl wins?
That might be a gross exaggeration, but there is so much we don't know about Belichick's operation. We'd likely know more if the NFL had conducted a serious investigation and, you know, kept the evidence. You have to wonder why Belichick continued the practice for so long if it wasn't providing a competitive advantage.
Belichick has denied a report he had a St. Louis Rams workout filmed the day before the 2002 Super Bowl, but why should anybody believe him?
Here's another beauty of a quote from the same Post story.
Remember, this was long before Spygate.
"(Goodell) understands, like we in ownership understand, that the American public wants to become emotionally involved in our teams and players," Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. "That's the reason these companies spend the money they do and these (television) networks spend the money they do. Certain behavior isn't tolerated by the American public."
Like cheating?
Thank goodness Specter came along. Only a person in a position of power could have prevented Goodell from burying this issue. After his meeting with Goodell last week, Specter said he was told Belichick's cheating goes back to 2000, a tidbit Goodell had conveniently avoided mentioning in public.
Look, Specter probably has questionable motives. He's probably grandstanding. But he also has become football's answer to Jose Canseco - the wacko who blew the whistle.
Somebody had to do it.
And if you think the NFL would look bad if Spygate reached a courtroom or the Senate floor, imagine somebody with clout pressing Mr. Tough Guy on players and their pharmaceutical habits.
Here's what Goodell said when this reporter asked him, in October, 2006, if the NFL has a problem with performance-enhancing drugs:
"I don't think it's a problem."
That was funnier than anything Burt Reynolds said in "The Longest Yard."
Joe Starkey is a sports writer for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached at jstarkey@tribweb.com.
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