Category Archives: Barack Obama

UPDATED: Pimping The Culture (No Nirvana)

Art, Barack Obama, Celebrity, Human Accomplishment, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Below is an excerpt from the current weekly column, Pimping The Culture, now on WND.

“The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture—it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to “Bread and Circuses,” Rome and its provinces wallow in the same lowbrow popular culture.

Incidentally, to judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products. …

… By and large, when it comes to entertainment, the people and the elites are on the same empty page—most of the musicians whose products they patronize, or with whom they fraternize, can’t read music, much less play it.

‘Grammy and Academy Award winner’ Jennifer Hudson, to whose primal screams the president and first lady attempted to dance, doesn’t sing; she screams. Voice coaches once considered the Hudson brand of ‘vocal wobble’ a deficiency in technique and talent. But then, ‘Why be a musician, when you can be a success?’ Such cacophony currently plays to full houses. It is to their credit that the First Couple smoothed the noise over with some smooth moves. …

… More sounds that curdled the air were those of Alicia Keys pounding on the piano keys. …

… I’d rather listen to the dodecaphony of twelve-tone music than sit through the guttural battle cries emitted by today’s entertainers. …”

The complete column is Pimping The Culture, now on WND.

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UPDATE (Jan. 24): No fan of mine (or my column), the writer below, says the in-house studio musician, is “Obviously a nirvana fan…”

From: Daniel G
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 9:59 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: anywho

“Typical prog fan, putting other people down because their favorite musicians don’t use 20 sided dice to choose their time signatures.”

HERE’S the good (non-nirvana) stuff:

100 Pages of Redacted Material

Barack Obama, Constitution, Fascism, Government, Law, Technology, The State

Over 100 pages of redacted material: That’s what you get from the US government if you ask what guidelines its FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents follow in determining when to surveil American citizens using GPS (Global Positioning System).

The American Civil Liberties Union, reports RT, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in which it asked for specifics, for right now none of us knows what can trigger long-term surveillance without a warrant.

The written report omits the flare and cultural references the journalist, Gayane Chichakyan, makes. (What a novelty.)

“To the question of how, when and why the government can track its citizens, the FBI responded with this [holds up blackened pages]. It takes a lot of ink to print out something like this,” says Chichakyan, also one of my favorite reporters (because she’s super smart and goes after the story).

“Some artistic souls may think of the painting ‘Black Square’ by Malevich,’…” she adds. [“Think”? Now that’s optimistic.]

BHO Inaugural & MLK Day: Two Poxes In One Day

Barack Obama, Founding Fathers, Propaganda, Race, Racism, Republicans, Socialism

We are on the receiving end of two poxes in one day: BHO’s Inaugural and MLK’s Day.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was found unfit to have a holiday named for him. Instead, we celebrate a man whom America’s most engaging first lady deemed “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.”

Jacqueline Kennedy, as revealed from audio recordings of Mrs. Kennedy’s historic 1964 conversations on life with John F. Kennedy, held a low opinion of Martin Luther King, the man America has since deified. Jackie was unafraid to say as much.

There were many reasons not racist for which to dislike MLK, not least of them was the man’s dalliance with communists. “His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband, hero of Chris Matthews’ last book, ordered the wiretaps on King.

Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.” Among his other endearing qualities, the not-so enchanting Martin Luther King had “declared that the Goldwater campaign bore ‘dangerous signs of Hitlerism.”

Indisputably, MLK set the tone for “assailing America as irredeemably racist” forever after. Other brothers have built on MLK’s work to sculpt careers as professional race hustlers.

Read Into the Cannibal’s Pot for more on MLK. But here is a short excerpt from the sub-chapter, “What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Say?:

The historical elevation of the democratic socialist Martin Luther King Jr. above the Founding Fathers is significant, since Jefferson’s libertarianism is inimical to King’s egalitarianism—never the twain shall meet. The attempts by many a modern conservative to conflate the messages of the two solitudes don’t pass muster. That King advocated a color-blind society is a pipe-dream exploded by historian Thomas E. Woods Jr. “Contrary to the sentiments he expressed in his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, King favored racial quotas. In fact, he called for massive government spending [on blacks] to make up for centuries of discrimination against them—‘a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.’ Late in his life he grew more radical, calling for a socialist system in America.”

UPDATED: Guns Are Good For Me, But Not For Thee

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Family, Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Individual Rights, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Regulation

A coterie of creepy kids converged today on DC. These modern-day freaks, the products of progressive parenting and pedagogy, put on a show worthy of the miniature reality show stars they are. (Watch Dance Moms to get a feel for the pathological, repulsive vernacular America’s kids are acquiring from the formative figures in their lives.)

The hallmark of an infantile society whose members lack an adult life: the canonization of The Kids.

Soon, the estrogen brigade on TV—right and left; Megyn Kelly and her slobbering sister on the other news stations—began beating on breast. The kids, the kids, you can’t use the “nation’s” little Buddhas—our demigods, our future (NOT)—in such a manner.

The participation of creepy kids—at the urging of their weepy, corpulent parents—in the celebration of 23 imperial orders in furtherance of federal tyranny was conflated by TV’s estrogen brigade with the NRA’s factual allusion to The Kids in this perfectly good NRA ad. It declares, “Protection for their kids, gun-free zones for ours:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

UPDATE: I am all for child labor. But kids should be seen and not heard. (Humor alert, FB Friends.)