Tomorrow is Forever (and Forever is Now)

A Letter to Governor Brown about sacrificing helpless animals

2012-02-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!" Tim McMullen

As usual, the needs of the most vulnerable are the least considered in a crisis. Governor Brown, I have been a consistent supporter of yours since your first term as Governor, and I have been a contributor to many of your campaigns. Of course, I have not always agreed with your decisions, but I have believed that your heart and head were in the right place.

However, in this most recent crisis, though I am sure that it has pained you, I do not feel that you have crusaded adequately to pursue the interests of those you were elected to serve. We have had too many years of California Governors (Reagan, Deukmejian, Wilson, Schwarzenegger) who put the interests of corrupt corporations and private fortunes above the interests of the people.

I completely understand that your battle, like President Obama's, has been hamstrung by the unrelenting and uncompromising zealotry of the Republicant minority and by legislative rules that allow them to thwart the will of the people, but I am not at all satisfied by the sacrifices that you have allowed to be borne by the people (especially children, elderly, the poor—our most vulnerable) while not demanding any sacrifices from those who have most benefitted from California's growth and wealth. Even the proposed tax extensions are mostly regressive, i.e., they hit the poor disproportionately.

As a teacher for over forty years (retired this summer) and a union bargaining team member for over twenty-five years (though retired, I remain chief negotiator for our local), I have witnessed first hand the devastation that that has been wreaked on our schools by many years of under-funding and unconscionable cutbacks.

The same is true of the devastation to be meted out to various parks in California (it is truly a crime that places like Pio Pico's mansion in Pico Rivera—the hacienda of the last Mexican Governor of California—is to be put on the chopping block). Once they are gone, we can never get them back! This truism also applies to your proposal on shelter animals.

Once again, in the name of austerity, a decision that will knowingly harm the most vulnerable has been announced. Your decision to reduce or eliminate basic protections for animals that are removed to animal shelters is absolutely the wrong approach.

What follows is the appeal from the Humane Society which articulates my concern about this decision:

"Our animal companions have been hit hard by California's economic crisis. Statewide, only 50 percent of animals entering shelters leave alive. We can -- and should -- do better.

Repealing state requirements to hold dogs and cats longer than 72 hours, provide needed veterinary care to stray animals, and hold rabbits, reptiles, and other animals at all is not doing better. It's going backward.

Please withdraw your proposal and support California's animal care and rescue community's effort to develop a sustainable plan for our state's homeless pets."

With all due respect, I repeat my motto: "The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!" Tim McMullen

Celebrate Columbus Day by Taking Back America!

2011-10-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

Below are two comments that I wrote. One is to the CEO of Bank of America about their decision to gouge even more profits at the expense of their customers, and the second is a response to a very clever picture from "How to Raise Your Vibration," which has contorted a dollar bill(s) to read, "We need a revolution." They fit nicely together, I think.

Mr. Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America,

You have made the outrageous decision to squeeze even more money from a citizenry and clientele that is beleaguered by an economic downturn and innumerable accomplished and impending foreclosures, a downturn that was caused specifically by the fraud, deception, and malfeasance of banks, accounting firms, ratings companies, brokerage firms, and many corrupt corporations, yours included.

Charging your customers a $5 monthly fee to access money in their own account (money that you already make money on by holding it and loaning it) is beneath contempt.

I was a loyal B of A customer for many years, but I will have nothing more to do with your firm until your egregious gouging of customers ceases.

This latest outrage is the last straw. I am urging everyone on my social network and everyone on my blogs to find a local savings and loan for their banking needs and turn their back on vultures who prey on the vulnerable while stuffing themselves with ever more unconscionable profits and bonuses while stiffing customers and society at large. Furthermore, I am encouraging my contacts to encourage the same from all their contacts!

Without a radical change of course for your bank, we will prove that you are not too big to fail!

(I ended with my usual, but newly amended aphorism to be found at the end of this post).

The following was posted on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/How-to-Raise-Your-Vibration/204840666199710

We do need a revolution, but a revolution brought about by thinking, not guns; a revolution brought about by wisdom, not clichés and obfuscating talking points; a revolution through moral behavior, not mindless violence; a revolution in values, not the false values designed to disenfranchise or subdue others, but a true valuing of the individual AND the society that allows the many to prosper and not just the few.

As the great Gil Scott-Heron said, "The revolution will not be televised." Why? Because we have allowed the corrupt few to steal our media and our political system for a "free marketing, deregulating" lie.

It is time to take our institutions back.

Government is not our enemy. But a government controlled by corrupt corporations and the politicians who do their bidding is by far our biggest danger. No group of terrorists world wide could wreak such havoc on our society or the world as the destruction we have allowed these corporate vultures to rain down on us with absolute impunity. And everyday, their political lackeys and media mouthpieces propose ever greater outrages.

The revolution may not be televised, but it can be organized and energized, and it is time that we do our part to help bring down this false prophet, PROFIT! Prosperity? Absolutely! But profiteering, like the pirates of old, must be stopped cold. We must rid our society of banksters and profiteers. Fair wages; equal protection under the law; health, safety, and a clean environment: these are the things that a fair and functional society can provide. However, these are the very things that are anathema to a system based on the perpetual degradation and exploitation of the many for the protection and profits of the few. This oligarchy needs to fall and be replaced by a new vision and model of governance practicing real American values of rewarding hard work, seeking to ensure fair treatment, and balancing the rights of the individual and the society to the mutual benefit of both.

Truth...Justice...these really have been taken away from us, or rather, we willingly gave them up for the dangling carrot of personal profit over honesty, integrity, and conscience. We have created several generations who believe only in the first half of the Golden Rule, "Do Unto Others!", and we have been sold the idea that "As you would have them do unto you," is bad for business. Well, if that is true, then it's a bad business that we are in!

We don't need a Superman, we just need to be real Americans again. Our kryptonite has been selfishness, greed, and a disregard for our fellow man (Yes, on this Columbus Day, I know that our history is rife with the antithesis of my "real American society," filled with the repeated intrusion of this Kryptonite, but history has also shown a slow, but steady progress and evolution toward the ideals of Truth and Justice, and despite this latest, thirty-year set back, we can help to restore that progress by joining the fight.

Whether you are of the 99% or the 1%, I encourage you to join the fight to restore integrity to our system.

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! The Greatest Threat to Hypocrisy is Democracy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!" Tim McMullen

Thanks for Sharing (An Homage to Three Who Passed Today)

2011-10-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs was a unique individual who made world changing contributions to the modern scene. He will be sorely missed.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs with their vision of the future...

Ironically, two other people died today who also made world changing contributions to the modern scene, yet most people will never have heard of them.

As quoted from USA Today—The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the civil rights icon hailed in his native Alabama as a "black Moses," died Wednesday. He was 89. Described in a 1961 CBS documentary as "the man most feared by Southern racists," Shuttlesworth survived bombings, beatings, repeated jailings and other attacks — physical and financial — in his unyielding determination to heal the country's most enduring, divisive and volatile chasm.

Rev. Shuttlesworth was said to have pushed MLK to come to Birmingham where the freedom movement finally caught the eyes of the world. His story is remarkable, and his kind of courage is seldom seen.

The Reverends Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Ralph Abernathy

at a press conference in Birmingham.

Finally, on a more personal note, the third unique individual, who shaped the world in a very different way, was the great Scottish guitarist, Bert Jansch, who died today at 67. He is the first guitarist that I heard doing absolutely remarkable things on the guitar. He did not play like anyone else (Yes, he was certainly influenced by Davy Graham, but, to repeat one of my original slogans: he did not imitate; he did innovate). He wasn't the fastest or the most polished. He did not play classical or flamenco like John Williams or Andres Segovia. He did not play flashy gypsy jazz like Django Rinehart, or cool country like Chet Atkins, or flying flat-pick like Doc Watson, yet his complex and eclectic style (which often sounded like two, and sometimes three, guitars playing at the same time) influenced the world of folk, and rock, and country, and jazz like very few people. His innovative approach to the acoustic guitar, along with his musical cohort, John Renbourn, inspired Paul Simon, Donovan, Jimmie Page, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Will Ackerman and Alex DeGrassi (whose acoustic guitar albums helped usher in New Age as a genre), and thousands of other guitar players. Pentangle (the seminal folk-baroque-jazz-rock group with Jansch, Renbourn, Jacqui McShea, Terry Cox, and Danny Thompson) also broke new musical ground and paved the way for many cross-genre explorations.

John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, who offered an innovative vision for guitarists.

Neil Young said that Bert was to the acoustic guitar what Jimi was to the electric—Neil was not wrong.

Bert was also an uncompromising vocalist and a powerful songwriter. He never surrendered his caustic Scottish brogue nor his willingness to break the rules to create unique musical experiences.

I had the great fortune to see him three times: once with Pentangle in a large venue, and twice at the wonderful, intimate McCabe's. His playing inspired me to create my own original guitar compositions (you can hear some of them on YouTube in my Instrumental Travelogues playlist).

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his poem "Each and All," said,
"Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent."

It is true that we rarely understand the impact that we have on the lives of others, but my guess is that Reverend Shuttleworth, Mr. Jobs, and Mr. Jansch had an inkling of the positive impact they had on their society. Would that all our leaders, all our innovators, all our artists could catch a little of the spirit of innovation, creativity, and courage that these three men offered to the world.

What Kind of Love Song?

2011-10-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

This is my latest video (and my latest song). It is another attempt at an annual birthday song for my wife Carolyn. Some others, including "A Pretty Good Start" and "365" can be found on my new playlist at YouTube called Tim McMullen's Love Songs. It includes several of my annual anniversary songs, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JojYzRrvmwM

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

Bijou Belle McSwanson,

The Dog of Democracy.

Happy Independence Day—The day on which the American colonies declared themselves to be United States, a declaration predicated on the outrageous claim "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

In the age of kings and emperors, this was one of the most idealistic and radical statements in the history of the world. It is critical to recognize that the original "Life, Liberty, and Property" was specifically altered because an idealism based merely on the aristocratic rights (or unjust acquisition) of property could not coexist with the rights of life and liberty. The rights of property had been the linchpin in the oppression of the masses that existed in every monarchy. That schizophrenic battle engendered by the landed gentry on behalf of "the people" in order to justify the gentry's "revolution" from the crown has been waged for over 230 years. Much of the slow progress toward the goal of actually protecting "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" accomplished in the past 100 years is facing its greatest assault since the early 1900's.

The 4th of July is not about "the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air." The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was about the War of 1812. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact a declaration of a new country. The "states" were not at war. Only Massachusetts and New York had been engaged in fighting. This was the majority of people in the thirteen colonies realizing that they must unite or be devoured one by one. It was a recognition that if they were to justify a revolution against the "divine right of kings," they needed a new set of principles. It is those principles that we should be celebrating and for which we should be striving this day and every day.

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"

Tim McMullen

Yep, It's Over...Today was my last class after 40 years of teaching!

2011-06-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

I had four wonderful retirement parties: one with the ERFT teachers' union; one with the English and Visual and Performing Arts department; one at the El Rancho High School end of year party; and one at our home last Saturday. Each was very flattering and deeply moving. I am humbled and gratified by the outpouring of heart-warming accolades and best wishes. If you read the previous blog, much of what follows will be redundant, but these are the words that I had written down during the day to share with the folks at the ERHS faculty end of year party:

I have a huge number of people to whom I am indebted. I started teaching in the Whittier Union HS District in 1971. I am indebted to Roger Weeks, former El Rancho Administrator, for hiring me at Sierra High School. He hired me because I told him that I thought reading was the single most important skill that kids needed, and when he asked, “How will you get kids to read?” I answered, “Any way I can…If they’ll read comic books, then I’ll have them read comic books.” He hired me on the spot.

I retired from teaching after 3 years in the Whittier District in order to play music, but a series of fortuitous coincidences found me returning to Southern California with Carolyn, the love of my life, and returning to teaching. I subbed daily for Whittier, Rowland, and Whittier City districts, but my first call from El Rancho came the first day of the infamous El Rancho strike. I worked that day, but I refused to return until the strike was over.

I have Tom Cunningham to thank for convincing the Principal at the time, Bill Payne, that despite my long hair, I seemed to be a good teacher.

Dick Reinbolt, who had created a class called “Murder, Mystery, and Science Fiction,” was quitting to write screenplays and run a Pioneer Chicken stand, and he insisted to the administration that I be his replacement.

Anne Sonnefield (later Anne Eichman) tapped me to help create a new American Studies Junior Honors team with two of the finest teachers I have ever known, Doug Anderson and Carolyn Clemons. Several of the people in this room matriculated through that team. The three of us taught for nearly twenty-years, and Doug and I have taught together for over thirty years.

I am indebted to my friend, Ben Rich for getting me more directly involved in the ERFT and for suggesting me for the bargaining team, and I am indebted to former Union Presidents Sid Apley and Marcia Hall for trusting me to work with the bargaining team.

To my good friend, Grace Nakamura, one of the most effusive personalities I ever met, for her dedication to the GATE program and to the continued improvement of all students.

I am very deeply indebted to my good friend, Julie Ellis, for putting great faith in me on many levels and for working so diligently to improve the quality of education at El Rancho.

Finally, a special nod to one of my heroes, my friend, Ralph “Jim” Kane, the instructional manager of social studies for many years. He used to walk briskly around campus with his thin tie swinging in the air and a little hint of Maalox on his lips; he took the Maalox to quell what he thought was indigestion, but which he didn’t take enough time for himself to figure out that it was, in fact, pancreatic cancer and that it would eventually do him in. After his passing, I wore a tie for quite a few years in his honor before reverting to my official uniform. Jim and I had many lengthy conversations about education and learning. Jim insisted, “Every kid can learn! But not at the same speed, and not in the same way.” He was dedicated to trying to find different methodologies that could meet the needs of different kids.

Sadly, in this day of matrices, pacing guides, and high-stakes testing, we have lost sight of what teaching and learning really are. Teaching and Journalism used to be two of the most respected and revered professions. But over the last forty years, the job and goal of journalism has been distorted and perverted; Orwell’s double-speak has increased exponentially into at least quadruple-speak. We now live in a world that makes Alice’s looking glass world seem quite rational in comparison. Unfettered greed has fomented an assault on workers in general, public workers in particular, and teachers most specifically.

Efficiency and Productivity have become perverted into “make people work much harder for much less compensation.”

Schools are not factories, and kids are not products to be stamped out by assembly lines. Teaching is an Art—and like other arts, it takes a mixture of talent and skill—different artists use different techniques, skills, passions, and sensibilities. More importantly, and a thing we forget when we see “business” as the goal of our “product,” is that our works of art are our students—and they are truly unique works of art because they must be empowered to be participants in their own creation. Cookie cutter curriculum turning out cookie cutter kids cannot be our goal. Sadly, and too often, good “workers” are not necessarily good people; however, good people are always, necessarily, good workers.

I thank all of you for all the dedication and hard work that you give to so many children who are not your own but whose lives you help change for the better. Keep being the artists that you are!

The Greatest threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!

2011-06-16T02:08:00.000-07:00

For those who didn't get this note at Christmas here was the preview:

Well, it looks like it’s time to hang up the old piece of chalk...

Teaching at El Rancho circa 1981

I mean the “low-odor, chisel-tipped, dry-erase marker!”

Yep, after 40 years of teaching, “Mr. McMullen” is calling it quits.

I spent most of those forty years thinking that I might never retire, yet there clearly comes a point when the scales tip and the unimaginable becomes the inevitable and then, in short order, the imminently desirable.

For those of you who don’t know, I already retired once after only three years of teaching. That time it was to play music, and who knows, it might be part of the reason this time, too. That last time, though, I came back fairly quickly for several reasons, but the main one was that I really enjoyed teaching. I am very proud to say that, after forty years, I still truly enjoy it.

My first year of teaching at Sierra HS, my second year at Santa Fe, and my third year at La Serna

I have had an incredible career. I have taught over twenty-five courses, and I have had the unique opportunity to conceive and create at least fifteen different courses including Advertising, Mass Media, Speech, Romantic American Lit, Fantasy and Sci-fi, Intro to Poetry, VISTA, and most recently, Creative Writing and Video Production. I have been privileged to work with creative administrators and directors like Roger Weeks at Sierra and Anne Eichman, David Verdugo, and my good friends, Julie Ellis, Ben Rich, Felicity Swerdlow, and Grace Nakamura at El Rancho, who repeatedly gave me these creative opportunities.

Even more remarkably, I have spent over thirty years of my career team-teaching; that is, I have been allowed to work directly in the classroom with fellow teachers, fantastic teachers like John Crone, Diane Kuramoto, and my American Studies team-mates: my dear friend and master teacher, Carolyn Clemons, for twenty years; and my inseparable partner and incomparable teacher for all of those thirty-plus years, Doug Anderson. As an Honors Team teacher, I have been honored to work with several generations of the most gifted and motivated students.

As a speech teacher, newsstaff advisor, creative writing teacher, and video production instructor, I have had the privilege to work intimately with hundreds of terrifically talented and creative young people. When the Academic Decathlon was first introduced to our school, under the direction of my friend Doug Anderson, I was offered the opportunity to coach the decathlon team in Language and Literature. I have been alllowed to work with some amazing students for the last twenty-five years, and though I take no credit at all for their achievements, I couldn’t be prouder of their accomplishments.

Teaching Murder, Mystery and Science Fiction at El Rancho

I was a Mentor Teacher for sixteen years, the entire duration of the program, so I had the chance to work with many young and gifted teachers. Many of my students have returned to El Rancho to become my colleagues and truly outstanding teachers, a fact that makes me very proud.

When I started kindergarten at four years old, people began asking, “What do you want to be?” Even by that young age, my father was encouraging me to consider being a lawyer (an aspiration of his, thwarted by the realities of a stint in the military and the raising of a family). So, whenever I was asked the question, I said, “A lawyer or a teacher.” You can see whose dream won that one, but my parents have always supported my choices, and at 86, when they pause for a moment from their globe-trotting (seriously...they are awesome), they still support those choices, including this one. [It’s one thing to grow old, but what must it feel like to have your kid retire? Since we don’t have kids, I won’t have to feel that one!]

As for the lawyering? Well, over twenty-five years ago, my good friend, Ben Rich, invited me to become a Union Rep, then a year or so later, he asked me to be on the bargaining team. I have been proud to represent the El Rancho Federation of Teachers ever since then. It may not be lawyering, but it is certainly interesting and challenging. I have had the pleasure of serving under four ERFT presidents: Nancy Miller, Sid Apley, Marcia Hall, and Rico Tamayo (five counting Laura Rico’s brief tenure), and I am grateful for the trust that they have put in me for these remarkably tumultuous years. My first day of subbing for El Rancho in 1975 was the first day of the El Rancho strike (and it was my last until the strike was over—they didn’t tell the subs that the teachers were on strike). Now, as I prepare to leave, I hear that the La Habra teachers are out on strike...Gee, maybe I should try to sub there—when the strike is over; there might be a career in there somewhere. I also especially thank my fellow reps, Lilia Carreon and Jim Halley, for all that they do for the union and the teachers; and I thank the teachers of El Rancho High School and El Rancho Unified School District for their commitment and for their support through all these years.

I want to thank Natalie Zucker and her late husband for creating the Zucker Teacher of the Year Award and for selecting me, along with Rosie Aragon, as the first co-recipient. Her decision to give back to the teachers who taught her children continues to be a significant inspiration.

I am also the last remaining active “Charter” member of the ABA, the teachers and coaches who have played basketball at lunch for the last few decades. I can’t thank enough all of those players, past and present, who have given me some of the most joyous thirty minutes of the last thirty years. I couldn’t have made it without that little bit of daily respite; and especially in these last few years, thanks for putting up with the knees and my top of the key to the top of the key, walking game. I really appreciate the camaraderie and the play. It is a tradition worth keeping.

A recent "teacher" photo from El Rancho

I want to thank those dear friends and colleagues who retired and those who moved on: Ralph “Jim” Kane, Maureen Hourigan, and Barbara Miller; Grace Nakamura and Dan Vandevier Yoshimoto; Carolyn Clemons, Diane Kuramoto, Ben Rich, and Marcia Hall; Nancy Lawrence, Steve Kennedy; Dick Reinbolt, Gary Barton, Connie Diaz, Jim Dyson; Sandra Espinoza and Cheryl Milas; Carolyn Martens, George Sturr, and Diana Malazian; Paul McKillop and Mako Tashima. I want to thank all those classified staff, past and present, who make the school and district run. Unfortunately, I will leave out scores more than I can include, but I want to particularly thank those special folks who are still at The Ranch, those people who have made the drudgery disappear and have made my time at El Rancho such a pleasure, including Doug Anderson, Lil Carreon, Jim Halley, Stan Wlasick, Charissa and Paul Zeko, John Crone, Jim Sorenson, Dawn Lam, Claire Katsumura, Val Kiralla, Christina Padilla, and Belinda Larrache, I say to you all, as Emerson said, “...Nor knowest thou what argument/Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.” Now you know!

And, there you have it—the big (or should I say, “long-winded”) retirement announcement (and life story). I hope this season finds you well and enjoying the things that you have chosen for vocation and recreation. All the best, Tim

Demand that the President "Seek Truth" & Corporations "Speak Truth!"

2011-05-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

To the President of the United States:

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"

Please use this ban on stealth dollars as the beginning salvo to rein in the distorting and destructive abuse of corporate dollars on our political process.

Thirty years of corrupt "free market" fraud has brought us to the brink of disaster. You serve the American people, and they deserve your concerted effort on their behalf as opposed to the continued collusion between government and the private sector that has created the greatest disparity of wealth in this country's history and that has driven us to become the fourth worst country in the world regarding wealth distribution and income disparity.

Thirty years of the morally (and legally) corrupt and corrosive falsehoods of Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer's "Reaganomics," the band wagon boondoggles of the "New Democratic Clintonomics," and the outright destruction of America's working class during ten years of unfettered, deregulated rape of the world economy and the unmitigated destruction of the social safety net by the "Bush Doctrine" (Anyone who we perceive to be a threat—with or without evidence—we have a right to take out!)

That doctrine, as absurd and patently hypocritical as it is (i.e., it is the precise rationale for committing acts of terror), was barely used in military terms, but it was used consistently and repeatedly to attempt to wipe out 100 years of progressive reforms and protections for the American worker and citizen against the unconscionable abuses of a corrupt and criminal corporate capitalism.

You were elected to stop the hemorrhaging of the economic and social structures of this country caused by unchecked corporate fraud and greed. You have not yet succeeded. This would be an important step in restoring sanity and justice to the country.

Please bring the abuses of government contractors to an end now, by demanding transparency in their spending of taxpayer dollars to subvert the taxpayers' interests.

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"

Tim McMullen

Check out this video and this call to action from MoveOn.org

http://pol.moveon.org/militarycontractors?id=27605-15276185-tWdV60x&t=5

Through the Looking Glass—The Irrational Assault on America

2011-03-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

You know, sometimes it really does feel like we are living in a Looking-Glass world. The frantic deregulation and merger frenzy of the last thirty years, stoked by the unfettered greed of banks, insurance companies, giant accounting firms, pharmaceuticals, media organizations, energy companies, and the Chamber of Commerce (to name but a few) nearly bankrupted this nation; the anti-tax policies and upward redistribution of wealth of the Bush years unquestionably brought on the greatest economic meltdown since the depression; colossal, criminal, corporate fraud and malfeasance have been exposed repeatedly, yet no real political or legal response has been forthcoming.

Instead, the "know-nothing" Tea Party swept politicians into power with the craziest campaign imaginable. Take all the things that nearly destroyed us—unfettered corporate greed, no public accountability for private or public corruption, an orchestrated attack against the regulation of criminal corporations, unlimited secret political spending by corporations wedded to an all-out assault on public and private unions and their political power—and reenergize each of these assaults on the middle-class ten-fold.

This illogical, delusional, self-destructive, Mad-Hatter Tea Party craze has now consumed the entire Republican’t party (as well as a few putative Democrazies) who are now clamoring and clambering over each other in a race to dismantle the last remaining shreds of the social, economic, and political safety nets of the diminishing pool of middle-income workers and the ever-increasing ocean of lower-income and unemployed workers.

Instead of attacking the obvious causes of our economic woes (including two illegal wars costing us over three billion dollars weekly), these elected representatives (read corporate political shills) and their deregulated media mouthpieces have mounted legislative campaigns to extend tax cuts and corporate subsidies for the wealthiest 1% while denying even minimal economic protections for workers; they are attempting to entirely eliminate funding for all public media, the only entities providing real, even-handed journalism in this country; they are attempting to severely curtail or destroy workers rights and protections with an unprecedented assault on collective bargaining; they have introduced a full-fledged campaign to decimate women’s rights by radically redefining rape, criminalizing miscarriages, allowing hospitals to refuse to save a woman’s life if doing so requires an abortion, and authorizing the legal murder of abortion providers; they have continued attacks on the rights of LGBT community; they continue their attempt to demonize immigrants and undocumented workers; and they have begun to decimate or eliminate environmental protections while legislatively denying scientific evidence and disallowing that evidence to affect our environmental policies.

The unimaginable harms of these initiatives, considered separately or collectively, is truly mind-boggling. As I learned from more than twenty-five years of collective bargaining, “once you give it up, you never get it back.” Just envision the havoc that any one of these proposals will wreak on our society, and then try to imagine what it would take to fix it once it is in place.

If we don’t get involved, NOW, in private conversations, in public demonstrations, in political campaigns; if we don’t immediately inform our elected representatives, both local and national, of our positions on these vital issues; if we don’t write our local newspapers and media outlets with rational, focused responses to the vitriolic distortion and lies of wacky political demagogues and crackpot pundits, the cause of democracy here and around the world will be setback for generations, perhaps many generations, to come.

“The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!” Tim McMullen

This One Really Did Crack Me Up (Because it's so true!)

2010-10-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

Most political ads during this season have been disgusting for their grotesque distortions and mindless reiterations of fear-mongering; they have no wit and no style; just gutter-sniping. However, when I saw this piece from the Brown campaign in which they give the Daily Show treatment to Meg and Arnold, it cracked me up enough that I just had to pass it on.

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"

Tim McMullen

The Sudden Return of HOPE!

2010-09-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, I HAVE HOPE again! To see why, check out this video from the Daily Show!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Elizabeth Warren

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

As a devout liberal (from Merriam-Webster: of or befitting a man of free birth, broad-minded, nontraditional, open-minded, progressive, radical, unconventional, unorthodox), it is impossible not to be disappointed with Obama’s performance so far. His compromises have severely handicapped his noble goals with flawed results (in each case, the result of pandering to the worst impulses of the corporate and political opposition of those both in and out of his own party). Finally, however, we have a straightforward accomplishment and a true glimmer of HOPE.

If you have not seen Jon Stewart, then you may not know Elizabeth Warren. She is the real deal. As a feminist, when I look at the Sarah Palin clones, the tea party-supported women candidates who spout meaningless and ridiculous clichés or downright ludicrous fantasies and fabrications, I am disheartened, but when I see Elizabeth Warren, I am uplifted.

She is extremely articulate, deeply passionate, terribly witty, truly knowledgeable, and thoroughly rational. None of your reality-distorting, think-tank talking points for her. Watch her video clips, and have a little hope that just maybe, with our strong and continuing support, she might just be able to bring down some real control on the wall street thieves and corporate marauders that have blighted our lives for the last thirty years.

I remain, faithfully yours, the Hopeful Cynic.

Tim McMullen
“The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!”

The Failure and Fraud of the Tax Cut Philosphy

2010-09-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration's direct tax cuts for America's wealthiest cost the government critical funds for infrastructure and other necessary government functions while heaping tons of tax breaks and deregulation on corporate America.

Our near-depression economy, decimated infrastructure, and crumbling public institutions are all part of these patently failed policies.

These tax cuts should end this year, as they were intended to do, especially since they had just the opposite effect that Cheney, Bush, and Fox News said they would have!

Nevertheless, the Republican’ts now smell Democrassic blood. Their immoral, but politically effective, plan to make everything worse and then blame it on the Democrassts appears to be working.
By opposing all solutions to America’s problems, and by sabotaging the democratic process with an archaic senate rule (filibuster) to consistently thwart the super-majority and the will of the people—remember most of those failures and flawed compromises were the work of a 59 to 41 derailment of democracy—the interests of the wealthiest 1% continue to be served and protected while the life-savings and retirement accounts of ordinary Americans are destroyed, and their homes and farms are foreclosed.

The Republican’ts have been aided and abetted by the complicity of a craven and corrupt corporate media. Now the party of ”Just Say No to the People’s Needs” threatens to destroy any small gains that have been made in the last two years, and replace them with an even more rabid anti-public, “feed the rich and starve the workers and the poor” philosophy that is further laden with anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-public servant, anti-worker, anti-government, anti-immigrant demagoguery.

Allowing the legislatively-mandated end to the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% is the right thing to do. I encourage you to support Patrick Leahy’s petition to allow the cuts to expire.

Why I am Voting in the Next Election...An Answer to a Democratic Query

2010-08-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today, the "Democratic Party," in an obvious fund-raising ploy, asked me to commit to voting in the next election, and, if I wanted, to add a brief explanation as to why I was voting. Their example was: "I'm voting because I want to move America forward." My explanation, the one that follows here, may have been a bit more than they expected, but I really do think that we could all help to bring about more substantial and positive changes if we committed ourselves to a more conscious and thoughtful political life. I encourage you to contact your representatives, your party, and yes, to give money to the causes that advocate for your beliefs.

I am voting in the next election and in every election because "The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy!" I want the United States to regain a commitment to its original vision, and I want the Democratic Party to return to its own most important principles. The writers of the Declaration of Independence removed "the protection of property" and replaced it with "the pursuit of happiness" because they realized that the defense of property and the inevitable domination by wealth would trump all of the other more fundamental rights and principles.

Since the 80's, the Democratic Party has been complicit in elevating the interests of corporations and the wealthy while decimating the interests of workers. Milton Friedman's proudly immoral stance on the lack of corporate responsibility, and the fact that his philosophy has been ruthlessly championed by both parties, has lead us to our present precipice. Recent and repeated capitulation by Democrats has gutted each piece of legislation intended to help the people.

Capitulation on principles over the last forty years has ultimately led us to the bald-faced absurdity, though perfectly Friedmanesque decision, of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Democrats and the American people have allowed unfettered media deregulation and general political discourse to be dragged so far to the right that it is no longer about evening the playing field; it's about allowing workers and the common man to even be in the game.

Corporate tax breaks, tax shelters, deregulation, unchecked fraud and corporate handouts have allowed trillions of dollars to be taken from the working class in the form of unprotected job loss created by outsourcing and so-called "improved efficiency"; by the elimination of pensions and reduction or elimination of healthcare; by laws designed to allow and encourage union busting; by the creative use of "bankruptcy" to break union contracts and to reduce workers' rights and benefits; by unconscionable CEO compensation; and by reductions to basic governmental protections and services, ad infinitum, while putting these trillions in the hands of a miniscule percentage of the wealthiest.

It is important to vote and to speak out on these issues in order to allow America to regain its moral integrity and reclaim its international stature.

I reiterate my motto, “The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!”
Tim McMullen

End Credits from "The Other Guys" are Brilliant Satire

2010-08-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

Stop the Unscrupulous Corporate Power Grab! NO on 16!

2010-06-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

Help defeat the liars! Tell everyone you know in California to VOTE NO on Prop 16!

Right there on the unsolicited "ad section" of my own homepage on Facebook is evidence of one of the most scurrilous, cynical, and corrupt corporate power grabs in years. The Headline is "Taxpayers Right to Vote" on top of a cute little picture of a red, white and blue "VOTE" button, followed by the words "Join us to protect your right to vote on projects that put your money at risk. Yes on 16." PG &E has spent an astounding amount of money on this ad campaign (their customers' money—customers who have no say in how their increases in utility costs are used to undermine their own public interests while protecting the private, deregulated industry giants).

In fact, this reprehensible anti-democratic proposition would do just the opposite of what it claims. For years Californians have witnessed the crippling effect that such an anti-democratic approach has had on our state budget: A small minority can thwart the will of the vast majority. As a result, our schools, fire departments, police departments, health services, libraries, all public services have been decimated by an entrenched and recalcitrant minority.

Proposition 16 is an absolute fraud perpetrated on the cash-strapped public by a predatory and often criminal corporation (remember the true story of Erin Brokovich? Remember Enron, deregulation and the PG& E public bailout?)

We should not only oppose this scurrilous abuse of the initiative process, but we should be actively working to break up the stranglehold that this private corporation has on more than half of the State of California!

Voters are sometimes convinced to do themselves irreparable harm in this era of partisan, unanalyzed sound bites. "It's your money" almost always works. "You have a right to vote" sounds appealing, but when it is used to perpetrate a fraud, those of us who know better, should be saying loud and clear to everyone with whom we come in contact:

"NO to corporate misdirection!"
"NO to the abuse of the initiative process for private gain!"
"NO to PROP 16!"

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"
Tim McMullen

To the FCC: Stop Media Giants & Corrupt Politicians from Hijacking the Internet

2010-05-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

The FCC has recently made several important and courageous decisions that have begun to reassert the right of the American people to protect their access to information and to end the unregulated abdication of the people's authority in deference to the whims and greed of corporate control.

A blatantly hypocritical, actively reactionary, politically motivated, and newly-emboldened Supreme Court recently handed down a bizarre and logic-twisting decision taking away a fundamental right of the citizenry to control their own political process as well as their right to regulate corporations while handing corporate America the ability to completely subvert the democratic process and dominate, if not destroy, free and open elections in America.

Not being satisfied with having spent forty years purchasing this morally and intellectually corrupt Supreme Court, these ever more rapacious corporations and ruthless ideologues have taken their game plan one step further.

Having decimated our public media and turned it into patently partisan infotainment through the thoroughly discredited process of deregulation and consolidation, they now have their eyes set on the latest and last bastion of open information and communication, the internet.

Dozens of elected politicians who have been further terrified or emboldened by this crass carte blanche handed to some of America's most morally corrupt corporations, have been cajoled, as a result of the peddling of influence, into supporting the further erosion, decimation, and perhaps elimination of this last venue for honest intellectual and political discourse.

These politicians, whose campaigns and loyalty have been purchased by corporate spending, due to our perverted system of campaign finance now further distorted by the most recent judicial fiat of the Supreme Court, do not speak for the people of the United States. They clearly represent only the interests of their financial backers.

No reasonable, fair-minded person purporting to represent the interests of their constituents or the American people could pretend that the complete control of the internet by media giants and communication conglomerates serves the needs of the populace or of a democracy. Perhaps it does meet the needs of the "constitutional republic," as the Texas State School Board now insists it be called in order to overtly denigrate "democrat" in favor of "republic-an" in another example of the flagrant distortion and politicization that can be wrought through the control of information and the power of publishing.

As you well know, this tiny minority of Congressional shills does not speak for the millions of Americans who have participated in a lengthy, hard-fought, uphill battle to convince the FCC and Congress to protect an open Internet and to facilitate universal access.

Once again, the FCC must stand up to these crass and corrupting commercial interests, assert its Title II authority, and fulfill its duty by protecting the right of the American people to an open and democracy-empowering Internet.

“The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!”

Tim McMullen

Consider adding your voice to the campaign at http://www.savetheinternet.com/

We Have Been Two April Fools

2010-04-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

This song is from my CD, I Could Write You A Song.

It was written for our 10th anniversary. We are now

celebrating our 35th year together and our 27th wedding anniversary.

April Fool by Tim McMullen

April Fool

Although this is a simple song—

A song of love I wrote for you—

I do not fail to comprehend

Complexity in all we do,

For I would be an April Fool

On this our anniversary:

I offer more than flower or jewel

To show how much you are to me.

I’ve loved you more than half my life;

I loved you long before you knew,

And when you promised to be my wife,

I felt no doubt in my own “I do.”

For I would be an April Fool

On this our anniversary:

I offer more than flower or jewel

To show how much you are to me.

Although this is a simple song—

A song of love I wrote for you—

I offer more than flower or jewel:

I said it all when I said, “I do!”

For we would be two April Fools

On this our anniversary:

We offer more than flowers or jewels

We said it all when we said, “I do.”

"If God Wanted Gay Marriage...": A Response

2010-02-07T02:30:00.000-08:00

In the Democratic Party “partybuilder Blog,” James Ryan said, “I am totally against Gay marriage in this country. My feeling is if God wanted Gay Marriage than [sic] majority of married couples would be gay and not staright [sic]. Instead God made us to be anything but Gay. I can't not [sic] see why someone would want to support Gay Marriage. As it is only 5 States legalizes [sic] Gay Marriage. California, Florida, NY, NJ, AZ Governors have vetoed Gay marriage at least twice.”

What follows is my answer:

James—I am assuming that you are not being ironic with this post, that you really are against gay marriage and that you are baffled by people who support it; therefore, I am going to attempt to answer you seriously.

First of all, the "if God meant us to" premise is an intellectual dead end. It has been used to justify every kind of injustice perpetrated by man and to condemn every form of progress, but it just doesn't work logically, even on its own terms. If you actually believe in Divine Providence, then ask yourself some simple questions. Does God want us to drive cars, fly in airplanes, cure diseases? If so, then why did it take mankind hundreds of thousands of years to develop these things? Why didn't He/She just give them to "Adam and Eve"?

If, on the other hand, He (I will use the politically-inspired grammatical convention of adopting the male pronoun when the gender is unknown) meant for these things to develop naturally through man's righteousness, ingenuity and quest for knowledge, then why do you assume that he condemns the variety of ways that man has contrived to live in social settings? Did he mean for us to live in gigantic metropolises? There certainly aren’t any of these in the Bible. So, do we do wrong by building these cities? Is the telephone evil? Or the computer? Or modern medicine? None of these things were even imagined, let alone discussed, by the men who wrote the holy books of any of the great religions, so they give no guidance on these subjects. This fallacy of “the unmentioned” can also be seen in the hypocrisy and intellectual absurdity of Justice Scalia’s “original intent” doctrine to which he adheres when it is convenient to his ideology.

If you believe that God created love, then why don't you accept that he created various kinds of love, including self love, erotic love, platonic love, filial love, parental love, divine love, and yes, even homosexual love? Homosexual love is not a recent invention!

If you base your prohibition on the Bible, then you are stuck with only a few passages, most of which come from the Old Testament, many of the tenets of which I guarantee you do not actually follow. Read “Leviticus” and tell me that you accept all those admonitions and rules.

If you look to the New Testament, then you have only Paul's letters; and although Paul’s letters are, in some cases, given equal status to the Gospels, his lectures and doctrinal edicts must be seen as personal opinions that do not necessarily reflect views found elsewhere. Many scholars argue that they directly contradict the message and teachings of Jesus. They certainly do not reflect the views of Jesus as articulated anywhere in the New Testament. Of course, they could not, because Paul was not witness to any of Jesus’s utterances, except in his self-proclaimed discussion with a light from heaven. Jefferson, as documented in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, called Paul the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."

Nevertheless, in most cases, when reading the Old or the New Testaments in English, we often face grotesque mistranslations and sometimes flagrant misrepresentations of the original Greek. Nowhere in the Bible did Jesus speak of homosexuality. If Jerry Falwell could identify and condemn a Teletubby as gay, then what would our modern day Pauls, such as Falwell, Robertson, or Dobson, honestly say of a group of men in today’s society who were as close and insular as Jesus and the Apostles, men who generally shunned the companionship of women and kept only to themselves? (I certainly acknowledge that a line of research goes well beyond Mary Magdalene to refute this male exclusivity, and I applaud that scholarship; I only point out that today’s homophobes would certainly have found Jesus’s “men’s club” suspicious and probably worthy of condemnation).

Catholic doctrine is adamantly anti-homosexual in its public declarations, yet most Catholic school boys and school girls and all adult parishioners know that many of their priests are homosexual. I am not talking about the alarming number that are sexual predators; I just refer to the hypocrisy of decrying homosexuality while being fully aware that many of their priests, their monks, and their leaders are gay. Just look at the various priests, during the recent sex scandals all across the US, who were shuttled from diocese to diocese because of their flagrant behavior and because of the incredible number of complaints. Homosexuality in the priesthood is tacitly accepted while being “publicly” condemned.

The same is true for a never-ending string of Evangelical preachers and “Christian” politicians caught with their pants down in both straight and gay liaisons.

Let me come back to your original reasoning. By your analysis, no one should be left handed because if God had wanted us to be left handed, a majority of us would be left handed. Surely you can see that this view is not reasonable. This handed-ness, including ambidexterity, is a natural proclivity. Yes, the individual can be forced to subdue and hide this proclivity, but it takes a great deal of denial (often accompanied by physical abuse) to counteract this natural inclination, and usually the individual is damaged by the effort.

Left or right handed-ness and sexual orientation are natural inclinations, but marriage laws and prejudice are not. They are man-made. Two hundred years ago, a majority of Americans were blatantly racist towards blacks. Are you willing to suggest that they were racists because God wanted them to be? Or would you rather assume that due to the battle that was begun by a few stalwarts who were willing to decry and condemn the hypocritical and ignorant injustice of the majority, the majority opinion was finally changed. If you think that God makes things happen, then don’t you attribute this shift in the majority opinion and this extension of justice to God’s will?

Pick out any other majority behavior you want. The “Divine right of Kings” was used to justify the wickedness, debauchery, cruelty, and injustice of tyrants. In other words kings ruled because God wanted it that way. We have devised more humane, more just, more rational systems of governing ourselves over the past centuries although we still have a number of issues to work out. “The Divine right of Kings” was superseded by the assumption “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say “heterosexual men.” Can anyone doubt that marriage, whether it actually procures it or not, is certainly one of the means of “pursuing happiness”?

True love is a fairly rare commodity. Certainly, participating in sex (whether heterosexual or homosexual) neither proves nor guarantees love. Neither does marriage. However, the ability of individuals to have a committed, loving relationship with a same sex partner has existed since the beginning of time. Check out David and Jonathan in the book of Samuel, especially in a faithful translation. In that book, God certainly did not condemn them.

As for marriage, in our society marriage confers specific legal rights—rights of custody, visitation, inheritance, etc.—that are not granted to the unwed. To deny these rights to individuals who love and cherish their "homosexual" partners just as much as "heterosexuals" do theirs is a gross miscarriage of justice. These rights are not predicated on whether one has sex or not, nor with whom. In fact, the rights conferred by the marriage rites are not accompanied by any guarantee of fidelity or love or longevity. Marriage simply acknowledges that the two people have consented to be wed. That’s it. The fact that homosexual males or females can find partners in whom they hope to find love, commitment, and longevity of a relationship should be rewarded for the same reasons that anyone else is allowed to marry.

Let’s face it, the “one man-one woman, till death do us part” premise has been a hypocrisy since its medieval conception. Witness the sanctioned, extramarital proclivities of males since time immemorial. Read Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” for an alternative version of marriage—one that is devastating to the woman—but one that had (and in some circles still has) wide acceptance. In “Ist Chronicles 3” and beyond, David’s many wives (at least 8) are enumerated. Marriage for Solomon and his hundreds of wives was purportedly for political convenience; in other words, the women were given (sold) to him to consummate political alliances.

Clearly, in most societies, certainly in this society, we have “evolved” beyond these archaic conceptions of marriage. Now we embrace a pledge of mutual love and devotion as criteria for marriage, not political plunder or male prerogative. Certainly these criteria of love and devotion can be met through both opposite-sex and same-sex marriage.

How individual churches choose to do address the issue of same-sex marriage is a matter of religion. Those religions that are openly hostile to gays will clearly begin to lose members as gay marriage proves to be identical to non-gay marriage. Those churches who embrace gays will not only earn gay devotees, but they will also gain converts who turn from those bigoted and backward, exclusionary, patriarchal denominations.

Superstition, groundless and spurious fears, and meaningless prejudice should not be allowed to forbid gays the basic legal rights and protections given to other consenting adults. Neither should illogical or irrational arguments be allowed to hold sway in the arena of public opinion.

Jonathan, I encourage you to read the Bible and the other holy books of the great religions with a careful and thoughtful eye and ear and heart. I encourage you to keep questioning the things that confuse you about the position of those with whom you disagree, and I encourage you to truly try to seek out the answers to your questions. If your question was, in fact, sincere, perhaps, as you examine the issue further, you may eventually arrive at a conclusion different from the one that you now hold. Rest assured, a majority of this country and the world will soon look back on the systematic persecution of gays and the denial of their civil rights as a gross and unconscionable miscarriage of justice.

The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!

Tim McMullen

Time to Start Putting the "Corporate Person" Behind Bars

2010-01-31T10:49:00.000-08:00

Consider signing this petition which endorses 5 new laws, suggested by Representative Alan Grayson, that would help to bring some sanity back to our political system and reign in the corporate criminals and their political graft that have nearly destroyed our system.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/grayson_democracy/?rc=fbp

The only difference between Bernie Madoff and hundreds of other corporate criminals is that after years of hearing about his abuses, they had incontrovertible evidence, so the Justice department chose to act. Remember the mantra, "Too Big to Fail." The addendum is "Too Big to Prosecute."

As many of you know, I have been ranting for some years about the travesties of corporate deregulation and the devastating hoax of the anti-tax, "free market" fraud that has eroded the efficacy of our fundamental institutions and transferred a huge portion of our national and international wealth to an immoral, multi-national, corporate elite while shifting most of the financial burdens to the middle and lower classes.

Now, in the wake of the most recent economic meltdown of the banking and insurance industries and other financial institutions—a crash that has decimated the life savings and retirement accounts of most in the middle class—the Supreme Court of the United States (a 5-4 majority of political ideologues bought and paid for by corporate money) has now changed the rules completely. They have basically declared that the American people have no right to regulate the control that Big Business has over our political process nor the politicians that they buy and the self-serving laws that the corporate lobbyists push through.

Remember, this configuration of the Supreme Court would not exist if the Supreme Court itself, under the leadership of the most hypocritical "injustice" of the past 100 years, Justice Antonin Scalia, had not stolen the election from Al Gore and handed it to George Bush. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito (That's not true!), two of the gang of five, would not be on this court! In Bush v. Gore, Justice Stevens, in a stinging rebuke to the majority said, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." How prophetic are those words now as we see these two help to finalize a corporate hijacking of our entire political system.

Chief Justice Rose Bird of the California Supreme Court was impeached and driven from office, ostensibly because she did not support the death penalty; ironically, her successors on the court did not uphold it any more than she did, but they were not impeached. No, she was really taken down by national corporate interests because they were unhappy with a series of opinions over which she presided that supported the liberties and rights of the individual over the criminal machinations of the corporations. Since then, these corporate interests have continued to run roughshod over the rights and interests of workers and citizens in this country.

Why was Governor Gray Davis of California impeached for a comparatively small economic glitch brought on by the malfeasance of Enron and other energy companies which the Bush administration had refused to regulate, especially after the mechanisms that Davis put into play had actually staunched the bleeding, whereas Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has overseen a financial debacle ten times worse, has faced no impeachment furor? It's simple. He supports the rights of corporations to pillage and plunder with impunity.

This recent Supreme Court decision must be fought by every means possible. One of the fundamental findings in Bush v. Gore was that the Florida court had overruled the intentions of the duly elected legislature. That finding by the Supreme Court was very debatable, but it is certainly not debatable in Citizens United v. FEC. For 100 years the American people, through their legislators, have sought to thwart the undue influence of corporations in the political process. This most recent court decision has patently disregarded the interests and intentions of that 100-year effort of the American people by creating a bizarre distortion of personhood and conveying it to corporations. [More to come on this "corporate person." When the first board of directors of a company that knowingly sold a defective product is found guilty of manslaughter or conspiracy to commit pre-meditated murder, a legal theory that I think we should now pursue with all due speed—here we come Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito—they may want to begin to rethink this "corporate person" fiction.]

I urge you to consider signing the petition sponsored by Credo to stop the corporate hijacking of our government.

Tim

This Little Light...

2010-01-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

It has been slightly more than a year since I posted this on our "Extended Family Blog," but with the victory of the Republican's "41st" senator in the same week that the Supreme Court of the United States handed down the most egregiously game-changing political decision in a century, this little observation seems alarmingly prophetic. Check it out to see how far we haven't come!

Carolyn is so excited about the inauguration: we have a little shrine to Obama where our regular seasonal displays go. We not only do Christmas and New Years, but we do Valentines Day, St. Patrick's, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year (our niece was adopted from China), etc. Right now the display is one half Aunt Pearl and Bijou (they both passed on two years ago—AP at 102 and Bijou at nearly 18) and we have a great decoupage Christmas plate that has a photo of Aunt Pearl holding Bijou in her lap. To counterbalance that display is a photoshop photo that Carolyn found on the internet of MLK and Barack Obama together. Finally, she has an 8-10 photo of Obama in a frame. At night it has a little battery-powered light turned on it so that it glows brightly in the dark. It is the same kind of light that we have lighting up the Buddha. So we have Buddha and Obama and Aunt Pearl and Bijou all shining in the dark.

I am a hopeful cynic. He is, after all, just a politician, and even if his heart and his mind are in the right place—which, I believe, they are—the irrational ideologies that have replaced reason and human feeling are so deeply entrenched that it may take several generations to change our course. Obviously, it is much easier to decimate and destroy than to repair and restore. The last 8 years (and much of the last 30) have been bent on destroying principles of fairness, justice, equality, peace, and individual freedom while championing greed, corruption, violence, and a gleeful dismantling of the social safety net. It seems to be a complete perversion of Emerson's "Self Reliance": privilege and power rig the system ("pay to play" legislatures and courts defend corporate machinations at the expense of workers and consumers); then the privileged and the powerful demand to be left alone to plunder (aka deregulation and "free markets"); at the same time, those who work hard their whole lives to earn what some CEO makes in a month can have it squeezed away from them by increased health and energy costs, corporate reneging on pensions and benefits, and market manipulation and fraud. What is worse, media consolidation and deregulation has allowed this "bill of goods" to be sold as"Gospel" and to become established wisdom.

I remain skeptically hopeful that we can slowly move to a renewed vision of social progress and freedom and a new definition of Americanism that replaces "Because we can" with "Because it's right." As Thoreau said, "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government." He also said, "It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience." By the same token, a society of conscientious people is a society with a conscience. I still believe that such a vision can be accomplished, but it will be a long, hard road. Perhaps President Obama can help us begin the journey. We will leave our little lights on for a while yet.

Tim

A Question to Democratic Leaders: How Can We Make Ourselves Look More Stupid, Ineffectual, and Unprincipled?

2010-01-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

From my page on the Democratic Blog: http://my.democrats.org/page/community/blog/timmcmullen

Political cowardice and unprincipled capitulation in the name of pragmatism are impulses that have often caused the Democratic Party to implode. The leaders of the Democratic Party and the grass root supporters of progressive principles need to use the tools at our disposal to pass the most progressive legislation possible.

Horribly compromised or eviscerated legislation is doomed to failure, which is precisely the Republican tactic. Get the Democrats to gut their own proposals and adopt some of the worst of the Republican and Republicrat proposals in the name of consensus building and bipartisanship; then, to a person, Republicans vote against these very compromises. In this way Democrats are coerced and conned into voting for debauched legislation that will ultimately fail, whereas the Republicans can point to the garbage and say, "We were against it!" Pathetically, you Democratic lawmakers fall for it every time.

So stop capitulating! Stop wringing your hands and saying you don't have enough votes. Use the tools at your command to live up to your principles and do what's right. Your battle cry has got to be, "LET THEM TRY TO STOP US!" instead of what appears to be our current motto, "How can we help them make us look stupid, ineffectual, and unprincipled while allowing the United States of Amnesia to perpetually and instantly forget or ignore the fact that it was and is the failed principles and policies of the Republicans and their corporate sponsors that have gotten us into all the messes that we are in!"

Our current grotesquely skewed and unnatural "Supreme" Court, a 5-4 fiasco that was carefully manufactured and purchased by the Republicans over the past forty years, has just handed the criminal corporations one of the most absurd and indefensible decisions in memory. In the future it will be held in as much contempt as the Taney decision: a piece of unprincipled partisan political hokum that is absurd on its face. Nevertheless, corporations will now be able to buy elections like they never have before. Just imagine how much harder it will be in the future to pass any legislation that protects the individual from the corporate criminal. WE MUST ACT NOW!

You Democratic leaders have held back long enough! Haul out the steamroller like they did after 9/11! You had a mandate, but you are losing it daily by letting the Nelsons and the Liebermans and the Limbaughs and the Snowes make you look like ineffectual nincompoops.

Look, you've lost your precious sixty votes, so now do it right. Strip Joe Lieberman of any influence he has. Take away every chairmanship. Demote him NOW—today; do the same to anyone who stood in the way of this legislation in either house. Let them take on their true colors and admit that they are Republicans if they dare. For at least ten months, you will still have a majority. Consider how a public drubbing of the turncoat Lieberman and his ilk would energize the Democratic and progressive base. You might actually have an answer to the manufactured "tea bag" bull.

Get healthcare done immediately by every legal means possible and move on to other important issues like truly regulating the banking and insurance industries, and passing a constitutional amendment to curb corporate power and to counter the most scurrilously activist supreme court in history. This advice is not impractical—it is eminently pragmatic, certainly more pragmatic than the systematic failure we have pursued up to now.

Tim McMullen

Compromise and Capitulation are Leading to Inevitable Failure

2009-12-17T03:35:00.000-08:00

BY TIM MCMULLEN - DEC 17TH, 2009 AT 6:11 AM EST (3:30 AM PST—or "how I spent my vacation...")

This post is a reaction to a very reasonable comment by Lincoln Park Dem to a blog post by Matt Blankenship on the Democratic Blog . Both are excellent and thoughtful bloggers.

The heart of the comment states what appears to be a sad political reality: We need Joe Lieberman. Mr. Blankenship's response was, "We need him, but the simple fact is, we don't have him."

I agree—We might need Lieberman, but we don't have him. We haven't had him for many years. Of all the missteps Al Gore made, Joe was the biggest. Out of the box he was unelectable to a majority of democrats, and as for the independents, why settle for a "droopy-clone" Republicrat, when you could have an actual Republicant?

The eternal compulsion to compromise with the Liebermans and the Nelsons of the party is a failed strategy. We had a better chance of wooing rational, moderate Republicans than the unDemocrats of Lieberman's ilk. An immediate no-nonsense stripping of all of his senate clout would have sent a much stronger and more rational message to both sides. Instead of Lieberman begging for political crumbs from the powerful majority, the confused, cowardly, compromising Democrats are begging for crumbs from him.

Putting together strong, righteous legislation and then fighting tooth and nail for it is a much better strategy than the constant vote counting that gives away everything to big pharma, big banks, big insurance, and corrupt political frontmen before ever beginning to put together real legislation; it was the "devil's deal" and damned from the start!

There must be others, like Spector (even if they are opportunists or sometime hypocrites), who are truly disheartened by their own party's hijacking by the rabid right. Let's face it: people like Lieberman and Nelson may very well defect to the party with whom they now vote; why not match their defections by wooing defectors from the other side.

If we put forth honest, forthright legislation that might actually help the people rather than serve corporate interests, we might achieve a bullet-proof majority almost immediately. Instead, we get a Baucus committee that is evenly divided (thus instantly subverting the principle of majority rule), a procedure which abdicated integrity and principle for "non-partisanship" and which yielded a true gutting of all of the most necessary changes while garnering no honest support from the minority. It was a purportedly "principled" strategy that was not merely flawed but flat out stupid!

Even if the hard-line, liberal, effective, health-care reform legislation lost by one or two votes due to corrupt and disingenuous politicians and corporate funding, that media-proof, demagogue-proof, legislative majority would be much more likely to emerge in the next go round.

This red vs. blue, two-party myth does a great disservice to our country by creating "winners and losers" with a “defeat the other side at all cost” philosophy rather than a system that seeks "better for all" choices. Watering down legislation and hamstringing government so that it can't succeed has been a right-wing strategy since before the Reagan regime, but the last nine years have certainly proved that we are not better off when the economy is in the hands of the unregulated private sector. Despite this fact, most people feel helpless, and rightly so.

A huge majority of the people truly do want change. They know that they have been damaged, many irreparably, by the status quo. They have seen their government and their taxes be corrupted by the cynical redistribution of wealth and power to the amoral, immoral, and often criminal wealthy, while the workers' jobs, savings, and rights are decimated. Consolidation of media has fueled this disintegration while feeding a "know-nothing" worship of demagoguery in the guise of infotainment over fact-based reporting and rational, political discourse.

It is true that Obama may very well need this win to stay afloat politically. If the Republicans beat him on healthcare, they can prove his ineffectiveness and take away seats in the next election, thus eviscerating his political agenda and perhaps even defeating him in four years. We have every right to be afraid of these possibilities. But this destruction of Obama's agenda is what Lieberman advocated before the election! Obama's defeat is what he promised to the Republican convention! We need turncoat democrats like Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson or Bart Stupak if we want a corrupt, immoral, billion dollar boondoggle for the insurance industry while putting at risk millions of working class Americans and their rights to effective, affordable healthcare and family planning. Obama needs a win, but an empty win that has no real hope of improving the lot of most Americans, and which is therefore bound to be a political liability, is no win at all! In fact, it is worse than a principled, hard fought loss!

At this late date it would not be easy, but the President and the leadership might very well do better by going after a few moderate Republicans (including giving some political plums) and put back the true regulations and public programs that might just save our health system, rather than to continue down the road of capitulation, hand-wringing, and cowardice. The pharmaceutical and insurance companies have reneged on their pledges to stay out of the fray; their front men in the Chamber of Commerce have been ruthless; the Catholic Bishops and the evangelicals have been ruthless. Joe Lieberman has been ruthless. It’s time to play hardball. I have come to the conclusion that we would be better off rewarding Joe Lieberman's petty, arrogant, unscrupulous, hypocritical blackmailing by stripping him of every vestige of power in the Democratic caucus today, right this minute, and fight for what is right. It’s time to drop the fantasy of bipartisanship within the two-party structure and put forth the will of the majority, a majority that voted explicitly for change, especially in the arena of health care costs.

And everyone of us who wants these changes needs to speak out to family and friends, to everyone we know; we need to encourage the politicians who support our interests and chastise those who don’t. We need to counteract the hysterical distortions and lies that have undermined this effort for true reform. Money still talks on both sides of the aisle and even through the corrupt and biased media corporations—so we need to contribute as much as we can to the political organizations that can get the message out through the internet, through the mail, and through the media, and not end up wishing that we had not lost this opportunity!

The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy!

Seek Truth! Speak Truth!

Tim

The Age of Outlaws and Desperadoes

2009-11-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

After several weeks of asides in his blog, my cyber-friend, Bobby Jameson, picked up the story of his musical odyssey. His post speaks of working with Ben Benay and a group of musicians he gathered to cut four songs. This song, “Outlaw,” is the first of those four.

The following comment on his song focuses on the historical context and ends with a song that I wrote early in that time period:

This is a great video for a very fine song. The arrangement, the vocals, the recording are all outstanding. People who didn't live through it (and even many who did) may not remember the "outlaw" craze.

On the one hand was the late sixties, Texas-based, anti-Nashville country music of "cosmic cowboys" Michael Martin Murphey and Jerry Jeff Walker (both of whom were backed by The Lost Gonzos) followed by "The Highwaymen," a group comprised of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash. A compilation album of Willie, Waylon, Jesse Colter and Tompall Glaser called “Wanted: The Outlaws,” was the first country album to go platinum. Lee Clayton's song, "Ladies Love Outlaws," was a huge hit for Waylon and was also introduced to the folk/rock world by Tom Rush. Willie’s “Red-Headed Stranger,” from 1975, continued the cowboy/outlaw mythos. Ed Bruce’s “Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” was also a major hit for Willie. A fairly successful country-rock group out of Florida called themselves The Outlaws (they are still performing).

At about the same time (1973) on the west coast, The Eagles released their “outlaw” concept album, Desperado, which included such songs as “Desperado,” “Outlaw Man,” “Doolin-Dalton,” and “Tequila Sunrise.” Their outlaw photo showed the Eagles and their buddies (and co-creators of the laid-back Southern California folk/country/rock sound) John David Souther and Jackson Browne.

Lest one assume that the cowboy/outlaw phenomenon was short-lived, it was over a decade after the “cosmic cowboys” hit the scene that the movie, Urban Cowboy, was released in 1980, around the same time that Bobby cut this song. His song captures that metaphorical image of the “contemporary cowboy/outlaw/musician” roaming the streets of a cutthroat town trying to find his way while knowing that he “can’t go home again.” This song has both a universal and a personal, autobiographical meaning.

It’s been a while since I have written one of these lengthy, analytical comments, but it feels pretty good (This one seems likely to make it onto my blog as well [obviously, it did!]).

I will end it with the lyrics to my own song, “Everybody’s Desperado,” written in 1973.

Everybody’s Desperado

Everybody’s singing “Desperado.”

Everybody’s thinking “Outlaw Son.”

Ridin’ rodeo—

Real Wild West Show—

Thinkin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

Dreamin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

Modern day cowboy

Got your boots on your feet

Your hat in your hand

And a hot dusty street

You’re lookin’...

You’re lookin’ for something

You ain’t about to meet

You can stand and stare into the setting sun

Dreamin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

You want to run, run, run, run, run...

Everybody’s singing “Desperado.”

Everybody’s thinking “Outlaw Son.”

Ridin’ rodeo—

Real Wild West Show—

Thinkin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

Dreamin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

Modern day cowboy

Got your boots on your feet

Your hat in your hand

And a hot dusty street

You’re lookin’...

You’re lookin’ for something

You ain’t about to meet

You can stand and stare into the setting sun

Dreamin’ ’bout a life out on the run...

You want to run, run, run, run, run...

But it’s already been done!

True Morality Versus False Morality—Raise Your Voice!

2009-11-05T00:18:00.000-08:00

It's true that there are some in this country who would argue that women and blacks should never have been given the right to vote; there are others who think that if we were a bit more like the Taliban or other theocratic, authoritarian regimes, America would be a better place; however, for those living in the twenty-first century, the fear-mongering, distortion, and out right lies used by the religious and radical right to defeat marriage equality are an embarrassment to this nation.

Our penchant for hypocrisy in championing freedoms for the majority while oppressing those freedoms for the minority, as witnessed in Maine last night, are a travesty of justice and a victory for ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. Eventually, as with slavery, post-slavery racist laws, sexist laws, or anti-miscegenation laws, the unjust tyranny of the majority that continues to justify discrimination against same-sex marriage will be recognized as the offensive, unreasonable, ignoble injustice that it truly is.

I predict that this new era of true freedom and justice for our LGBT brothers and sisters will arrive surprisingly soon, but clearly not soon enough. Those of us who know that such discrimination is wrong must raise our voices against it. We must demand true morality and break the stranglehold of the false morality that is used to perpetuate injustice. It is important to remember that Christianity and the Bible were used to justify every one of the egregiously immoral laws listed above, and that each of those laws originally reflected the majority view.

Tell your friends, your social network friends, your local representatives, your senators, and President Obama that they must lend their voice to the fight for true freedom.

The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy!
Seek Truth! Speak Truth!
Tim McMullen

Only One Way (The AC/DC Sock-It-To-Me Talkin' Blues)
Dedicated to Anita Bryant and the Joint-Chiefs of Staff

I went down for some Florida sun,
Nothin' in mind 'cept to have a little fun.
Standin' on the beach—it's a beautiful day—
Lookin' all around for a place to lay.
Got my lunch packed—in my knapsack—
That's the day I found out why
They call 'em "Sandwiches":
'Cause of the sand which is
In the sandwiches.

Well, I lay for an hour
Gettin' hotter and hotter;
I decided I'd rather take to the water.
I swam on out, not payin' any mind
When a floatin' log come up an'
Hit me from behind.
I started drinkin'!
Then, I started sinkin'!
I had the unpleasant feelin'
I was goin' down
For the third time!

Then the lifeguard did what lifeguard's do:
He pulled me out,
But I was turnin' blue—
There was so much water
Where the air should be
There was only one way
He was gonna' save me
So, he did it!
Tipped my head back;
Pulled my tongue out
And proceeded to resuscitate me—
Mouth to Mouth.

After two or three minutes
I was breathin' again.
I opened my eyes and said,
"Thank you, Friend!"
When up marched a crowd of men and women
Not lookin' like they were goin' swimmin'.
They yelled, "Faggots!
Dirty, filthy maggots!
You'll pay for this lascivious display!"

Turned out it was some kinda' crazy crusade
Had 'em all riled up; they were really afraid.
Then the Orange Juice Lady began to pray:
"The Lord wants you to screw in just one way—
Missionary fashion—sex, without passion—
"Thank God, he's done quick,
Dallas (Jerry Springer) is on tonight!"

As they took us away, they spied a young couple
Who were gettin' it on, real lithe and supple
She'd pulled up her skirt;
He'd pulled down his pants;
There was no need to guess,
You could tell at a glance
They were fornicating—there in the sand—
Everybody gave 'em a great big hand
For humping each other The American Way!

Well, we both escaped, no thanks to them.
Now I'm real careful where I swim!
But I hear that Anita's headin' out West—
(Or Orrin, or Jesse, or Newt)
[Insert the demagogue of your choice]
...Not gonna' give those gays a rest!
Now, I don't mean to be blatant,
But could she/he be latent?
I mean, who else would raise up such a fuss?
Not us, would we? Would we?

When these voyeuristic busybodies finally relent
And sex is no longer a political event,
I hope things have changed to this extent:
We respect the privacy of mutual consent.

A Great Article on one of our greatest songwriters!

2009-10-20T20:19:00.000-07:00

http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article/Jesse-Winchester-The-Long-Road-Home.html

The article has some truly interesting insights, and I have nothing more to add for now. Soon, however, I will dedicate a blog or five to Jesse and his marvelous music.

Tim

"A Pretty Good Start" - Latest Birthday Song for Carolyn

2009-10-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, each year I try to write at least a couple of songs for Carolyn. Several of my anniversary songs, "The Surprise" and "I Do," as well as last year's birthday song, "365." can be found on YouTube in the playlist, "Tim McMullen's Original Songs." This year's birthday song for Carolyn was performed for the first time at her birthday party. Thanks to my brother, Tucker McMullen, for videoing the event.

Another Encounter with Maury and Jim

2009-09-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

This completes my reminiscences about Maury Muehleisen

and Jim Croce. They were truly two of my musical heroes

as songwriters, guitarists, storytellers, and performers.

I wrote "Favorite Song" as an homage to the song style

of Croce and Muehleisen only a few months before the

the tragic plane crash that took their lives.

Favorite Song by Tim McMullen

Favorite Song

You may well become my favorite song,

With a beautiful form and a beautiful style.

Your words are enough to make me smile

And enough to make me want to sing along;

I haven’t felt that in a long, long while.

You may well become my favorite page;

So many-colored pictures scattered there.

Pout and giggle, shout and stare:

Challenging the feeble chains of age

With a gentle beauty I am pleased to share.

Chorus:

So often I have been so close to you—

Supposed to do what I’m expected to—

It’s likely you’ll not know this song’s for you.

You may well become my favorite star,

A little bit of heaven in my night.

If I wish I may, I wish I might

Thank you for just being who you are

And for chasing weary shadows from my sight.

Repeat Chorus, then repeat first line of each verse...

And I haven’t felt that in a long, long while.

This is a track from my CD, I Could Write You a Song, produced by Tim Clott and I. The song was recorded by Bino Espinoza.

Support Leahy and Conyers attempt to "Bust" the insurance monopoly

2009-09-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is the letter that I sent to my representatives concerning the Health Insurance industry. It was in support of bills that Senator Leahy and Congressman Conyers have introduced to fix a glaring error in the oversight of health insurance companies. Visit their site at:

http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust/e3sg3nx24j3jnn8t?source=sep09_hcantitrust

The last five paragraphs are from their "stock" letter; the rest is mine.

The unconscionable profits of America's health insurance companies are crippling the economy and driving hundreds of thousands into bankruptcy.

One of our good friends has just recently been forced to sell her home, a home which had been fully paid for by her and her husband over the last thirty years. Both had worked diligently their entire adult lives. They had each retired with excellent pension plans (railroad retirement), and medical insurance. They even worked together overseeing a storage facility several days a week, just for fun.

About two years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer. He was a tough, positive fighter, and they tackled his malady head on. However, within a year, they were informed by their insurance carrier that they had "exhausted" their coverage. Our friends and their employers had been paying for this coverage their entire working lives, but within a year or so, it simply ran out. In order to continue the therapy that his doctors had prescribed, our friends had to re-mortgage their home.

Despite all their efforts, about nine months ago the husband died, and his wife, now on a fixed income, cannot repay the loan. This was not some spurious real estate or stock market speculation; this was not some outrageous, unproven medical chicanery; this was not some hopeless case in which they foolishly threw money down the drain.

Our friends had to "hock" their home, and now she has to give up that home, simply to pay for the regular medical treatment which the insurance company stopped paying because they had reached the company's self-imposed (and non-negotiable) payment limit.

It is hard to imagine that this insurance practice is not patently fraudulent and, therefore, criminal, but because of the unregulated nature of the industry, it is perfectly legal. Congress bears great responsibility for such occurrences. In many ways, Congress is at much at fault for these human tragedies as are the conscienceless, morally corrupt, for-profit insurance companies.

The McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 exempts health insurance companies from the antitrust regulations that apply to nearly every other industry, rules that protect consumers from anti-competitive business practices like price-fixing.

Passing health care reform with an effective public option is one key way to promote competition in the health insurance marketplace, but we must also eliminate this unjustified and unnecessary antitrust exemption currently enjoyed by insurance giants.

That's why I urge you to support the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, S. 1681 and H.R. 3596.

This legislation, which has been introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy in the Senate and Rep. John Conyers in the House, will eliminate the outdated insurance industry antitrust exemption, and force health insurance companies to compete fairly -- like virtually every other business in America.

Thank you for supporting S. 1681 and H.R. 3596.

Another One-Sided Conversation with Maury

2009-09-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Twenty-five years after writing "Second-String Songman," I decided to put together a collection of Maury’s songs, including all the songs from Gingerbreadd, plus Maury’s song, “Salon and Saloon” that Croce sang on his last album and other Croce songs that seemed clearly influenced by Maury’s songwriting style. I decided to look for a picture to put on the cover of my cassette, and I stumbled across a fan site, Jim Croce: The Tribute Page, by Tom Orrechio. The group had just had a twenty-fifth anniversary “gathering” to honor the passing of Jim and Maury. They had visited Maury’s grave; they had met with members of the Croce and Muehleisen families; they had met with the duo’s producer, Tommy West; and they had passed the guitar around playing songs by or about Jim and Maury. Suddenly, I realized that here was a group that might actually appreciate the song that I had written twenty-five years earlier.

I posted the lyrics to my song and its accompanying intro, and I immediately received a request to show the song to the Muehleisen family. A few days later I received a lovely letter from Maury’s sister, Mary, thanking me for the song and saying that they would really love to hear it. Unfortunately, I had never made a recording of the song; however, my desire to allow Maury’s family to actually hear my song impelled me to try to record it. I went to Bino Espinoza, the husband of Sandra Espinoza, our high school choirmaster. A couple of years later, Bino won an Emmy for sound engineering. We recorded two songs, “Second-String Songman,” my song about Maury, written, in part to emulate Maury’s “A Song I Heard,” and “Favorite Song,” which I had consciously created to have a Croce-Muehleisen feel. These two recordings were the impetus for recording the rest of my album, I Could Write You A Song, recorded and produced by my best friend, Tim Clott. Tom Orrechio then put the song on his website; a year or so later, when Mary created her webpage for Maury, she also included the song.

I offered this reminiscence to the Jim Croce fan site—Jim Croce: The Tribute Page. http://www.jimcrocefans.com/

Someone asked the website forum “if anyone had ever seen Jim and Maury perform. What follows is my answer.

I had the opportunity to see Jim and Maury perform only once. They came to the LA area in '71 or '72 and played in a theatre in the round; the circular stage actually rotated during the entire performance. Having played in a lot of different venues myself during that time (but never on a revolving stage), I'm guessing that it was a slightly strange experience for them, especially since Jim's form of storytelling and performing was so intimate. A constantly moving target must have been slightly disconcerting....

Needless to say, Jim and Maury's performance was nothing short of amazing. I have seen hundreds of acoustic performers—pretty much every major folk performer who hit LA from 1965 to 1985, and anyone of significance who has come through since then. But Jim and Maury's performance is still vivid in my memory after 35 years. Jim's stories and introductions were awesome. Not until I saw Cheryl Wheeler perform in the mid-nineties had I seen anyone offer such an inspired mix of trenchant story telling and brilliant song writing.

Croce's persona on stage was both hilarious and spellbinding. However, when they began to play, Jim's identity was merged into Maury/Jim, the wizard songsters. Jim was a very good guitar player with a strong baritone, fun and interesting; Maury, however, was pure magic. He was everywhere in the song: rhythm, lead, syncopation, percussion, and incredible harmony vocals. Put simply—he was mesmerizing. Then, Jim would launch into the next intro, and Maury would sit, quietly bemused until the next downbeat when his flying fingers would reassert his remarkable authority in the musical mix.

Despite the billing, watch any of the videos, and you see that Jim and Maury sat side by side. They were a duo, a dynamic duo if ever there was one. The lack of acknowledgement on some of the Croce releases notwithstanding, it is quite clear that Jim and Maury regarded themselves as musical partners whose aesthetic empathy surpassed any that I have ever seen. Not even David Lindley and Jackson Brown, David Bromberg and Jerry Jeff Walker, Jesse Ed Davis and Taj Mahal had that perfect a connection.

The only guitar player I have ever seen who might have matched Maury's intuitive complement to his partner was Brownie McGee with Sonny Terry. His hands never stopped. He really didn't play chords at all, or rather, he played bass runs, lead runs, and constant chord prograssions intermittently throughout a song. Maury is the only other guitar player that I have seen who had that intuitive, eclectic approach to completing a song. (This may seem strange and self-serving, but if you heard him, you would agree—the only other person I have ever heard with that kind of full-service sound was my younger brother, Tucker McMullen, when he played with Bob Ward and the Cigar Band in the late 70's, and his inspiration clearly came from David Bromberg, Amos Garrett, Jesse Ed Davis, and especially, Maury Muehleisen).

It would be nice to have the opportunity to see more of Jim and Maury's work, and perhaps more footage will be uncovered in the future. Also, I add my voice to those hoping that Maury's album will again become available. Though always regarded as a jewel, my vinyl recording is not as pristine as I would like.

Hopefully this little reminiscence hints at the wonder that was Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen.

My "One-Sided" Conversations with Maury

2009-09-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

Second String Song Man

(For Maury Muehleisen)

Second string song man

Beautiful back-up band

Playing his heart out

For a part of the game

Singing the harmony

Stringing the melody

Seeing a small piece

Of another man’s fame

Nobody knew his name

Seems like quite a shame

Chorus:

Sang like an angel

Wrote like a demon

Held me against my will

And left me dreamin’

Sang about a song he’d heard

And never heard again

I know the music’s haunted me

Just like it haunted him

The singing of a friend

Will never end

Chorus

He’d play those haunting melodies

Whispered fingers fly

He sang so high

Chorus, then Repeat First Verse

Second string song man

Beautiful back-up band

Playing his heart out

For a part of the game

In 1973, I wrote a song entitled, “Second-String Songman.” The title, as I am fond of doing with my titles and lyrics, is a triple-entendre. It made reference to a lead guitarist’s use of the B-string as a significant tool in his repertoire as well as the acknowledgement that the accompanist often is overlooked in favor of the front man; finally, it made specific reference to the fact that many backup musicians are also very talented song writers, singers, and musicians in their own right, but that they are seldom fortunate enough to have that talent recognized.

I wrote that song with several players in mind; one obvious one was my brother, Tucker McMullen, a brilliant and innovative guitarist who was playing with Bob Ward as a part of Bob Ward and the Cigar Band. However, the specific reason that I wrote that song at that time was out of a deep sense of personal loss that I felt upon hearing of the death of Jim Croce.

I was a huge fan of Jim Croce, but I was a bigger fan of his unknown accompanist, Maury Muehleisen.

In my book, Tim McMullen: Aged Fifty Years (A Life in Song), I had a chapter called “The Dear Departed.” It included a number of songs that I had written about lost loves, lost friends, lost lives, but it included four songs that I had written emulating or in honor of performers who had died.

When I got to my song, “Second-String Songman,” I had already spoken about the personal impact of the passing of my musical heroes, Phil Ochs and Townes Van Zandt. The next passage is one that I wrote for Jim Croce, but especially for Maury.

Yet another homage to a dead singer-songwriter. But unlike Phil Ochs and Townes Van Zandt, who had at least achieved some notoriety and a strong fan base, Maury Muehleisen was a true unknown. He put out one album on Capitol Records in 1970 entitled Gingerbread. It sold very few copies, but I, who buy everything that looks interesting (and this had David Bromberg and Eric Weissberg playing on it) bought it and instantly fell in love. He had a very sweet, delicate voice; he had an intricate, finger-picked guitar style; and he wrote such strange and interesting tunes that I was just knocked out by it. But there was no follow-up album and no news about him. Nothing.

Then, one day, I looked at an album by newcomer Jim Croce, and I saw Maury’s name on it. I bought the record and found another brilliant songwriter in Croce. Later, I read the story. When Maury’s album came out, his producers, Cashman and West, introduced him to Jim Croce, and convinced Croce to tour with Muehleisen as his accompanist, but the tour failed to raise any real interest in the record. When Croce got his big break, their roles were reversed, and Maury played behind Jim. Suddenly, his long, curly hair with Dutch-boy bangs and his fluid guitar style became instantly recognizable as “that guy behind Croce.” His style of playing and writing did, indeed, have a huge influence on Croce.

When Jim Croce died tragically, and the world mourned a hero they had just started to know (many of his hits were posthumous), Maury Muehleisen, his faithful “back-up band,” died in the plane crash with him, but the loss went all but unnoticed. It seemed like quite a shame...

(This is also dedicated to another great back-up guitarist, Jesse Ed Davis, 1948-1988).

Honoring Two Musical Giants on the Anniversary of a Tragedy

2009-09-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

Today marks the 36^th anniversary of the loss of two musical giants, Jim Croce and Maury Muehleisen, in a tragic plane crash. I wrote this on the guest page of the marvelous site created by Maury’s sister, Mary Nowak, at http://www.maurymuehleisen.com

Dear Mary,
Your wonderful dedication to your brother's life and talent has allowed so many—family, friends, fans old and new—to share an inkling of what a remarkable musician and person Maury was. Maury and Jim are famous not because of their fate, but because of the incalculable contributions they made to the hearts and minds of millions through their unique music.
This day is the anniversary of a tragedy, a sad reminder that very bad things happen to very good people, but it is also a reminder of how fleeting life is for all of us and that the way we live our lives makes a difference in this world. Jim and Maury's friendship, collaboration, musical vision, and legacy set a high standard for lives lasting three times as long. Today is a day to inspire us to have our mark in the world, however modest or grand, be a positive force in the world.
Thanks, Mary, for your love and dedication; thanks to the many who visit this site and share their love and admiration; and thanks, especially, to Maury and Jim for the inspiration—Thanks for saying, "I Love You," in a song!
Tim

I will follow this post with several posts about the marvelous Maury Muehleisen.

Ants, Antipathy, Antagonism, and The Vinegar Man

2009-09-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

After sharing a brief story about feeling sorry for having to kill a fusillade of attacking ants, and then quoting a verse from “Six-Year Drought” by James McMurtry, Craig Bickhardt (Ninety-Mile Wind blog—see “My Blog List” below right) said:

“Sentimentality is wrung out of this and left to evaporate on the parched earth. McMurty’s lines are as hard and pitiless as the Texas plains, and yet they still touch something pulsating with life inside. I bet he sees his struggling ants and sheds no tears for them.

While I hold McMurtry's standard in the highest esteem and wouldn't change a word of it, I suppose I’m just a sucker. I’ve flirted with sentimentality all of my writing life, and maybe I’ve even crossed the line sometimes. The truth is it’s damn hard not to cross it if you feel any pity at all for the world.

Softer art for harder times? Probably won't fly. Yet we must feel something in order to be human. There must be emotion when it is warranted, and there is indeed a perceptible difference between emotion and sentimentality even though it sometimes takes a microscope to see it. After all, it’s our compassion that keeps the human race going, and we don’t want to lose that.

In the writing we can err both ways. On either side of the good, observant narrative there are pitfalls; effusiveness or stolidity. The line between is walked with a cold eye and a warm heart.”   
©2009 by Craig Bickhardt

What follows is my comment:

Sentiment in the defense (or pursuit) of art is no vice! Okay, it can be...but I would make the distinction between pathos and bathos—between sentiment and sentimentality—between moving and manipulative. My guess is that for the clever, story-song teller, a certain kind of self-imposed restraint is necessary to prevent a powerful and moving story from becoming a maudlin mess.

Last time I shared my Gogi Grant story, this time I offer one of the earliest poems that I remember being moved by. I found it in a hard cover book of poems "for children" that my parents had bought for me when I was about seven. It had the typical Stevenson poems and those by Edward Lear and Eugene Field, but it also had poems by Thomas Augustine Daly in Italian dialect ("Two 'Mericana Men—about immigrants and stereotyping, and "Leetla' Giorgio Washington" with a clever twist on the cherry tree story) and one of my all-time favorite pieces, "The Vinegar Man" by Ruth Comfort Mitchell. I still use these pieces with my students and have done so for going on forty years.

The Vinegar Man

The crazy old Vinegar Man is dead! He never had missed a day before!  
Somebody went to his tumble-down shed by the Haunted House and forced the door.
There in the litter of his pungent pans, the murky mess of his mixing place,
Deep, sticky spiders and empty cans with the same old frown on his sour old face.

"Vinegar—Vinegar—Vinegar Man!
Face—us—and—chase—us—and—catch—if—you—can! 
Pepper for a tongue! Pickle for a nose!   
Stick a pin in him and vinegar flows!  
Glare—at—us—swear—at—us—catch—if—you—can!
Ketchup—and—chow-chow—and—Vinegar Man!"   

Nothing but recipes and worthless junk; greasy old records of paid and due;
But down in the depths of a battered trunk, a queer, quaint valentine torn in two.
Red hearts and arrows and silver lace, and a prim, dim, ladylike script that said,
(Oh, Vinegar Man, with the sour old face!)  "With dearest love, from Ellen to Ned!"   

"Steel—us—and—peel—us—and—drown—us—in—brine!
He pickles his heart in” a valentine!   
“Vinegar for blood! Pepper for his tongue!
Stick a pin in him and” once he was young!   
Glare—at—us—swear—at—us—catch—if—you—can!”
"With dearest love" to the Vinegar Man!

Dingy little books of profit and loss (died about Saturday, so they say),
And a queer, quaint valentine torn across…torn, but it never was thrown away!  
"With dearest love from Ellen to Ned" "Old Pepper Tongue! Pickles his heart in brine!"  
The Vinegar Man is a long time dead: he died when he tore his valentine.    

Ruth Comfort Mitchell

Yes, it verges on sentimentality, that little catch in the throat, but the wonderful juxtaposition of the older narrator recalling his own childhood voice and then merging the two into an adult recognition of a tragic life suddenly revealed (a little like Kane's "Rosebud"), stays well on the right side of the line. The complex interplay of internal and end rhyme is also masterful as are the alliteration and the parenthetical caesura (the matter of fact, "died about Saturday”) that pulls it back to the harsh reality.

When I heard Danny O'Keefe's "Valentine Pieces," from his second album, O'Keefe, It evoked a very similar feeling, except that it was written in the first person, and the hurt was more immediate:

"The valentine pieces litter the floor of my room...
I should go get the broom..."

I’d say, keep your art ever to the fore, and the sentiment will take care of itself!

PS: I got so carried away (as usual), I forgot about the ants. I think you have inspired me to make my first posting of one of my short stories on my blog. It is a cautionary tale about a man with feelings about killing ants that are very similar to yours (and whose feelings, of course, mirror my own). I'll let you know when it's posted; you might get a kick out of the "similar minds" experience.
Tim

Teddy's Legacy—Taking Back the "L" word—A response

2009-08-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

MarieDNC posted a fine piece called "On Sticks and Stones and Mincing Words..." on the Democratic Party Blog. What follows is my comment—

Dear MarieDNC—

You make excellent and important points. When Rush Limbaugh first began gaining traction, my phone machine message recited the definition of the word "liberal" and made the declaration that we need millions more, not less, of them (I don't mean to diminish your sentiment; I really do think that the lowly phone message can be a powerful tool for pithy, philosophical or political statements to friends and strangers).

You also tackle the absurd subversion of language and ideology that has execrated socialism, and you have succeeded in identifying the root cause of its defamation, ignorance.

In many ways, this country was founded on socialist principles, before such an ideology was articulated as an "ism." The idea that community mattered, and that one was not alone in this world, were the underpinnings of many of the various societies that sprang up. And the idea was manifested in community activities from barn raisings and church socials to tithing and civic zeal.

This social conscience and social duty was, of course, mixed with a spirit of rugged individualism, due in part to the nature of the wilderness being faced. However, individualism and independence were not generally equated with personal aggrandizement. In fact, aristocratic wealth and abusive greed were most vilified. America's first great literary artist, Washington Irving, wrote, with vicious glee in "The Devil and Tom Walker," of the greedy and miserly; he made the point that all the wealthy businessmen, religious hypocrites, slave holders, and money lenders were the Devil's people and doing old Scratch's bidding.

It was not really until the mid-1800's with the slaveholding aristocracy, quickly followed by the late 1800's Robber Barons and the rise of "Big Business" that we began to get the mantra of "free market capitalism" being perpetrated on the public (Thoreau's brief foray into "anti-government" sentiment notwithstanding).

Even the conviction that business could do whatever it wanted and that government had no right to interfere was never seriously entertained by the populace, and worker's movements began to emerge almost immediately to counter the abuses of economic power. After relatively few years of unfettered industry, another Teddy, Teddy Roosevelt, ushered in the "square-deal" and its recognition that business must be controlled. His populism was replaced with boosterism and Coolidge's "The business of America is business," followed very quickly by the great depression and our relapse into "socialism," i.e., that the government and business have "social" responsibility, with FDR.

The rabid zeal of the "new" free-marketers was fueled by Ronald Reagan's myopic anti-communism, and therefore, his natural affinity for Milton Friedman's despicable philosophy which claimed that any hint that a corporation has any social responsibility is SOCIALISM. The deregulation wave started under Reagan and perpetuated by both the Democrats and the Republicans has clearly lead us to our current series of economic debacles.

We must reintroduce the principle of "principles" in our public discourse and in our solutions to public problems. The socialism of "social good" must be resurrected. The frustration that offered Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama as alternatives to "business as usual" and the "hope" that propelled Obama into the presidency need to be empowered to take back our language from the double-speak of right-wing think tanks and "death (panel) squads" and demand that our politicians care more for the public, for their true constituents, than for the conscienceless, corporate criminals bankrolling their next run (too harsh? Nope, too true!)

One last point, as much as I enjoyed your posting, I do think one point of clarification needs to be made. When you put down that plastic card, and the pharmacist hands you your prescription, it wasn't free! I know that you know this, but I think in these times, it's important to not allow our thinking to be assailable, even on nit-picking grounds. A social solution is not "free," but a system that recognizes health care, for example, as a right rather than a privilege, is eminently more equitable and, ultimately, more efficient, than the "for-profit," market-driven, "our client is the enemy of our profit" system that we now have in America.

To honor both Teddy's, two of the greatest statesmen America has ever known and two men who exemplified the meaning of the word LIBERAL, we must increase our efforts to accomplish justice in this country and the world.

The greatest threat to democracy is hypocrisy!
Seek Truth! Speak Truth!

Tim McMullen

Rules for the First Day of School and the Rest of Your Life

2009-08-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Paula. I actually had a great day. I got to listen to me talk (which if you've read any of my blogs or comments or seen my videos, you can tell I love to do) and played stuff and read stuff that made them laugh...and hopefully think.

I spend one minute on my class rules, which I argue are actually rules for success in school...in sports…in work...in relationships...in life.

There are only six;

Courtesy
Cooperation
Concentration
Common Sense
Self Control
Courage

They are easy to understand, but hard to consistently execute.

And I only have a few Things That They Have to Learn to do better than they do at present:

Think—Read—Think—Listen—Think—Talk—Think—Write—Think! That's it!

Some would find it hard to believe and others would find it appalling, but I truly don’t care what they end up thinking as long as they end up with the tools and the willingness to figure out what it is that they actually think and understand why they think it.

My Class Slogans and Posters
I have a nice 13”x19” Epson printer, so they look pretty cool—
(All the images are mine, as are the slogans, unless otherwise noted):

Why be Normal? (a bumper sticker in the 70’s—
but it was mine before I saw the sticker)

The Trouble with Normal is it Always Gets Worse! (Bruce Cockburn)

Their Brains Were Small So They Died! (from a song by Mark Graham)
Ignorance is Weakness—Knowledge is Power! (Tim McMullen)

Face It—Ignorance is NOT a Marketable Skill! [Fox News not withstanding]
(Tim McMullen)

Envy is Ignorance…Imitation is Suicide (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Trust Thyself! (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Tomorrow is Forever and Forever is Now! (Tim McMullen)

Don’t Be Afraid! (Tim McMullen)

The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth! (Tim McMullen)

As I said, I had fun. I hope the students enjoyed their day as well.

Setting the Standard, Being the Standard Bearer, Rejecting Standardization

2009-08-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

This was intended as a response to a comment that Craig Bickhardt made on my previous blog post, but blogger wouldn't take it (maybe it was too long). As I was composing it, I realized that it would be my new blog post, so here it is.

Craig, thanks for commenting.

Speaking of keeping in touch with the past, tomorrow I have a new Junior English class that I have not taught in about fifteen years; i.e., before the "standards" movement. It's supposed to mean that kids meet certain standards, but what it really means is that curriculum is standardized (read, teacher proof). I have spent nearly forty years designing my own curriculum, and since it is American literature, much of it is in the public domain, so about seventy percent of what my American Studies Honors students read and work with is a list of stories, poems, and essays that I have personally organized to help them make sense of American literature, history, art, and philosophy.

I guarantee that my curriculum is far superior and more cogent than the haphazard and piecemeal textbook designed to address "standards" and not the story of American storytelling and thinking.

So, tomorrow, I am reviving an introductory unit that I used to do with my freshman (fifteen years ago). It is comedians on education:
the brilliant Gallagher, with his analysis of the absurdities of the English language and the stifling of imagination and innovation through "education": "We go to school to learn to communicate and they tell you to sit there and shut up!"; George Carlin on being the class clown; an excerpt from a Woody Allen movie in which the model child and other of his ten-year old classmates explain where they are now twenty-years later; and Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci with his "Five-Minute University," everything you will remember from college five years after graduating. Finally, they will read Robert Fulgham's "Everything I needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten."

They will actually take brief notes on the main point of each of these pieces, then they will write a brief reflection about any one or more of the points made in any of these pieces and what they think school and education actually means in their lives.

I know that I promised to use your blog and song, "The Real Game," on the first day, but I am waiting a day or two before I go even further and challenge the carefully honed, corporate constructed, Jerry Springer, Big Brother, American Idol, Faux News fantasy world of "reality-shows" and ask them to examine reality. It's not really in the textbooks either, but I have found it in your blog, and I will be sharing it in the hopes of preventing a "failure of imagination generation."

Oops, now I'm going to be late for work. I said that I would probably be laying off on the blogging and the videos once school started, but it hasn't happened yet. Oh, well, like I said, kids (and reality) don't get here until tomorrow.
Tim

Singin' the Blues about the Wayward Wind down in El Paso

2009-08-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

Craig Bickhardt, on his blog "Ninety-Mile Wind" http://ninetymilewind.blogspot.com/
wrote that the day he moved to Nashville as a songwriter was the day Marty Robbins died. He then tells a great story about his father's career as a radio station engineer and what that was to a kid growing up. The blog moves to Marty Robbins, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash, and Jimmy Dean and other great story-song writers. I added this to the discussion:

What a wonderful and nostalgic reminiscence. We have gotten several of these lately, and they are just marvelous.

Of course, you did not mean your list to be exhaustive, but "Running Bear" (which always conjured up a humorous picture for a literate and punny kid), "Wolverton Mountain," and Hank Snow's version of Red Foley's "Old Doc Brown," all jump to mind as great story songs.

As you point out Johnny Horton and Marty Robbins sort of vied for top spot, but Marty's "El Paso," pretty much made him the king of the larger than life melodramatic song. Despite a fine, and more "popular" version of "Singing the Blues" by Guy Mitchell, nobody can touch Marty Robbins on that sultry piece of country suave. Plus, he was the first to record a Gordon Lightfoot song ("Ribbon of Darkness") and boost "Big Gord" (the punny kid always laughed at that nickname on one of Lighfoot's early albums, too) into the spotlight. And "A White Sport Coat...." Marty Robbins was one of the true greats.

The following is a similar reminiscence from my collection, Aged Fifty Years: A Life in Song. It's the intro to the chapter entitled, "Sorry I Haven't Written Lately."

"I have always been a sucker for a song. One of my unfinished pieces observes:
Song after song sings a sorry refrain—
Tears in my eyes from some other fool’s pain.

"I have a very vivid childhood memory of just such an impact. Occasionally, my parents would pack up the three of us boys and haul us to the Sundown Drive-in, just a few blocks from our house. It was a great treat for all of us: the speaker hung on the car window; the colossal screen jutting into the sky; the trip to the snackbar for popcorn and drinks or to the playground nestled under the screen; all three of us in our pajamas, rotating from the front to the backseat; the cartoons and shorts before the feature; and the peculiar familial isolation of cars full of people sharing the movie experience together alone.
"This particular night, I was reclining on the back seat of our Buick; Tucker, Kevin and my parents were all in the front seat when 'The Wayward Wind' by Gogi Grant came on the little speaker. Though I had heard the song before, I had never listened to the words. Lying there alone, looking out at the dusky sky, I suddenly heard every word and felt the mournful, wistful pain the woman felt, and I was choked up, then moved to tears by the story-telling in this simple 'pop' song.
"I still occasionally sing for my students, and I suppose I should be embarrassed by my being so easily moved by a story or a song, but I’m not. When I sing 'Old Shep' by Red Foley; 'Sully’s Pail' by Dick Giddons; 'Chief Joseph' by Danny O’Keefe; 'Deportee' by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman, 'Child’s Song' by Murray McLauchlan; or even my own song, 'Michael,' I am invariably choked up. The sight of tears welling up or streaming down their teacher’s face is probably a very peculiar experience for most students (probably pretty silly way back when I was performing in clubs, too), but I don’t mind. Real feeling, even if vicarious, is what the human experience is about.

Sorry for being so long winded again, but I really love your personal anecdotes, and this one of mine just struck me as hitting on much of what you said here and elsewhere: to paraphrase, as often as possible, music's goal is to touch the soul.

Thanks for doing that with both your music and your prose.
Tim

Guns, Taxes and Government Failure: A Response

2009-08-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

A Facebook "friend" added this brief post to his page: "am I the only one who is seriously considering spearheading a revolution to take this country back to basics? I'm specifically talking about taxation...."

To this, one of his friends, A.S., replied in a light-hearted, spoofing tone,

"if i do will I be reported for legally carrying my pistol concealed to one of these meetings?"

He followed quickly with,

"It's much more than enjoying the right to carry my piece. It's the fact that the state government of Utah understands that it's my right to do so and respects it. They understand that the government does not give any of the rights named in the constitution. They are given by the All Mighty not some fool in the state capitol, and they are like that with taxation and government spending as well. Jason Chaffetz is someone that you should look up. He is our congressmen here, and the dude is awesome. He sleeps on a cot in his office rather than using taxpayer money to get himself an apartment."

I felt compelled to respond thusly:

"Seriously? The God given right to own guns? I don't recall a single gun in the Bible-not in either testament—nor the Book of Mormon. There are plenty of references to weapons, but in nearly all they are specifically identified as "weapons of war," and quite often they are being destroyed (beaten into plowshares).

"Does your congressman give back his salary, so he cannot afford a home? Does he receive less than the other legislators? Do they 'tax more' to get better apartments? Taxes have been around since way before Jesus—'Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's.'

"We have been cutting taxes, for 30 years, while our infrastructures erode. We have created a system, through term limits and supermajorities, through corporate lobbying and deregulation, and through an anti-government propaganda campaign so that the "higher taxes" we really pay are to corporate CEO's and boards (through inflated salaries) while they use our money to buy protection from the workers and the government."

A.S.:

"You are right Mr. McMullen, God did not give me the direct right to own a gun. He has, however, given me the right to defend my home and my family. If the means to do that are a legally concealed handgun or a 12 gauge under my bed, then in a way God has indeed given me a right to own a gun. No one can defend what's mine, as in my home and family, better than me. It is also my responsibility to do so and no one else's. Not even the police, Sir.

"If you read further in the Book of Mormon you would also read that many times weapons were taken up in defense to protect their homes, family and way of life.

"If your home was broken into and your only option was to call 911 and hide, what do you think the police would find after arriving there 10 minutes after the call was made by you? Probably your dead body with the aggressor way long gone. Why not give yourself the opportunity to even the odds and not let someone else decide whether you live or not?

"About taxation, you are right again. I expect to be taxed. But why should I pay taxes into government programs that don't work. Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, the Stimulus, the Post Office, Amtrak. Can you please tell me which one of these great programs full of good intentions has worked. I am paying into the first 2 and those 2 will probably not be available for me to use because they will be broke by the time I reach the age to use them. Now you want the government to run health care. Seriously?! You would give someone with a bad track record more of your money?"

"About corporations, I agree with you to a certain extent. There are corporations that are abusive and have bad people running them. Just like in government. But just like government, these people can be voted out by their shareholders since most of these companies are public companies. If you don't like the way they do business, don't buy their product and tell others to do the same. If you do like what they do than I hope you don't have a problem with them paying their CEO's whatever they feel they have to pay him. Even if it seems absurd to you.
Sir, all I have to do is look to California and see that what you believe in does not work. Unfortunately, that is the direction that this President is taking this country full steam ahead.

Rather than putting any more of this on someone else's Facebook page, I decided to post the rest of my answer to A.S. here.

As for guns in the home, I honestly think that they serve very little purpose, but they can be very dangerous. I have lived sixty years, and I have never had my house broken into. Neither have my parents or either of my brothers. My great aunt (who was a hundred and two when she died two years ago) was burglarized three times before putting bars on her doors and windows (a sad commentary on the area—twice it was someone in the neighborhood). She lived just around the corner from where I lived for thirty years, just off of Norwalk Blvd. in the little strip of county between Whittier and Pico Rivera. She was never home when they broke in. One of her (five) husbands had been a policeman, so she had his guns, and every single time, besides her jewelry, they stole a handgun. The result? Three handguns in the hands of criminals.

Check the statistics; the chances of people breaking into your home and threatening you with violence is almost non-existent, and unless you carry your loaded gun with you around the house while cooking, while watching TV, while going to the bathroom, etc., you will not be able to use your gun if your home is ever assaulted. Most criminals are cowards; they want to sneak around and steal your stuff; they don’t want to confront you. If, in fact, it is a hit or a true home invasion, the likelihood of your being prepared to repel that onslaught is basically nil. They count on the element of surprise. So, the fantasy of “defending your wife and kids with a gun” is extremely thin. Guns, however, do kill many thousands of little kids, spouses, parents or boy/girlfriends for every crook they stop. There are much better ways to protect your family. I think both Jesus and Joseph Smith would agree.

As for your point about taxes and government programs: This litany is particularly frustrating because it shows how successful the right has been in mischaracterizing reality. Since Ronald Reagan said, “It’s not the government’s money, it’s yours,” and “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem,” we have been bent on trying to prove these specious and meaningless non-sequiturs. During his administration, he attempted to distort the purposes of government: he and his supporters in Congress took away the rights of individuals and heaped them onto corporations; he attempted to dismantle basic protections for the environment, to destroy public education, to turn back civil rights, to undermine or destroy unions (the people's way of fighting against corporate abuse), to reduce restrictions on media ownership, to deregulate industry, and to remove all restraints on corporate mergers, while building the biggest deficit in the history of the United States up to that time. Suddenly, corporations were given boondoggle tax-write-offs and government subsidies, grotesquely lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest while putting it directly on the shoulders of the middle- and lower-income working class.

His beliefs were based on two things: rabid anti-communism and a rabid faith in the “free market” as envisioned by Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer (author of “trickle-down" economics). Friedman actually said that anyone who believed that corporations had any moral or social duty were socialists—which, in his world-view, was tantamount to being a witch, and for which crime burning at the stake was too good. These two ideologues sold an entire generation (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and their advisors as well) on the fantasy of the ultimate efficiency and righteousness of “the market.” Look up Friedman and read him. His attitudes are absolutely appalling, but they explain perfectly the continual failures and fallacies of his illusions as perpetrated on the American public and the world. The Savings and Loan crisis, the Exxon-Valdez, Bhopal, Three-Mile Island, media consolidation, Enron, Bernie Madoff, the banking crisis, the housing crisis, the education crisis, the healthcare crisis, or the turning of a budget surplus under Clinton into the biggest deficit in our history under Bush—these were all the direct result of lowering taxes and deregulating industries (not to mention an ill-advised, unwarranted and unnecessary war—a war that was clearly intended to promote the business interests of certain American industries). These are not isolated incidents or examples of a few rogue CEO's or corrupt politicians. These are simply the application of Friedman's claim that corporations have no moral responsibility except to make a profit for their shareholders. As a result of Bush going far beyond even what Reagan could have imagined, we now have the widest disparity in our history between the tiny 2 to 5% of the wealthiest vs. the entire working class who has seen its salaries, its real-dollar buying power, and its life savings, and even its actual jobs in free-fall, all as a direct result of the flagrant failure of the ironically named “free market.” It was never “free”; it just redistributed the protections. It took them away from the American people and gave them to the market.

Yet, despite the concerted effort of "in-the-pocket" politicians doing the dirty-work for industry by trying to dismantle social-programs and eliminate government regulation (on the grounds that they are too costly for business), many of our social programs have survived. Social Security, Medicare, the US Postal Service, the DMV, unemployment insurance, even welfare: these are not failures; they are absolutely incredible successes. It is truly astonishing that people can hold these systems up as evidence of government failure. Are Medicare and Social Security under-funded? Yes, because corporations and free-market politicians were able to exempt corporations and the wealthy from paying a fair share of their profits into the system. Is there waste and corruption in Medicare? Sure. Most of it is due to deeply under-funding the enforcement of the system because it is the private sector that perpetrates and benefits from the fraud. Nevertheless, it is nothing like the fraud, waste and life-threatening corruption in the private, for-profit sector. Who would you trust to protect the country’s interests, the American Military or the mercenaries of Blackwater Worldwide, Inc.? Safety regulation, police protection, fire protection, education: we constantly cut these services and make them do more with less. Do you really think that an unregulated free market would do a better job than the government? I find no basis in reality for this assumption. None whatsoever. It is simply an illusion—a falsehood.

Again, read Milton Friedman or his friends, Mr. “I do NOT believe in PUBLIC education” Howard Jarvis or Mr. Deregulator, Phil Gramm. Our problems are not the result of a few criminal CEO’s. They are the direct result of a carefully orchestrated snow job. We now have a thoroughly debased media system that actively prevents citizens from easily finding the truth. Do we have the greatest healthcare system in the world as the pundits and the politicians constantly claim? Absolutely not. We do have by far the most expensive, the most inefficient, and the most ruthless private health insurance system of any of the industrialized nations. To claim otherwise is to simply perpetrate and perpetuate a lie. Yet a corps of frightened and misinformed citizens can be whipped into a frenzy about “socialism” and protecting their “freedoms” while being convinced to shout down and disrupt any “free” discussion of an incredibly important national topic.

We have a private, for-profit corporate system that takes billions of our dollars in profits, then spends millions of those dollars to actively deny the care for which we have paid; we have a system that has, in fact, created “death panels.” I am not talking about the simple authorization to pay the fees for patients who seek advice on various end-of-life choices, as the proposed legislation does (a suggestion that originated with a Republican lawmaker but that was scurrilously and falsely distorted by Sarah Palin and others in their "do anything/say anything to prevent meaningful change" mode). I am talking about the real, for-profit insurance company bureaucrats who are currently and actively denying care or medication to millions who have already paid for those services. The pharmaceutical industry spent millions successfully lobbying the Bush administration and congress to prevent the government from negotiating fair prices on pharmaceuticals while the industry pocketed billions. If we look honestly at the government’s ability to tackle really important things, they have a much better record than those motivated only by profit. If we debunked the Supreme Court's patently absurd claim that "money is speech" and moved to end the stranglehold of corporations on the political process, we could restore the government's ability to do things remarkably well in a very short time. And there would still be plenty of profit left over for the market.

Thanks for reading. These are really important topics, and they will affect the lives of Americans for many generations to come. We should be trying to hash the issues out rationally and earnestly, speaking to our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, and not with the mindless name-calling, profanity, and gratuitous vitriol that passes for discussion on all of the political blogs and most of the mindless media, but with the most honest, sincere, forthright and informed dialogue of which we are capable.

The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!
Tim McMullen

Emoticonversations™ Coming Soon!

2009-08-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

I sort of understand MySpace although, semantically, the “friend” thing is a bit imprecise.

Facebook—I'm on it, but I don't really see the point.

Apparently, both of these approaches are much too literate, however, so now we have Twitter: say all that you have to say in 140 characters and have thousands of people hang on your every tweet. Clearly, Twitter is for twits.

Let's face it, though, even that's much too much human contact for today's techknowcrat.

Therefore, I am proud to announce that I will be launching "Emoticonverse™"—A social-networking service in which no words are allowed; your entire "Emoticonversations™" will be limited to ten emoticons or less.

So, here's the classic boy-meets-girl story in ten emoticons:

:)
Smile!

;)
Wink!

:D
Big Grin!

:-O
Surprise!

/:)
Raised eyebrow!

:-/
Confused!

:|
Perplexed!

:(
Sad!.

;)
Wink!

:)
Smile!

What more is there to say?
Besides, it's about time that we all began looking at the world a little more sideways, don't you think?

Ironically, this is the very first time that I have used one of those dopey little things!

•€ ‡∑ ¢◊

These, of course, mean nothing; I made them up just now. However, when my "Emoticonverse™" has run its course, I will be introducing "Emoticondoms™," a program that will weed out and erase all the little buggers in incoming messages while randomly creating and placing new and meaningless configurations in all outgoing correspondence.

I can't wait. Can you?
Tim

Painting the Roses Red—Changing the Texts in Texas

2009-08-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

I have been a teacher for nearly forty years, so I am not shocked to discover that “the TX State Board of Education is choosing to allow biased ‘expert’ panelists to use their children's social studies curriculum as a platform for their political agendas” (a quote from a form letter from the UFW).

In all honesty, school textbooks have generally been used to propagate what e.e. cummings called "the shrill collective myth." Inglorious stories of collective cowardice, hypocrisy and deceit have often been "swept under the rug" or barely mentioned, and women and minorities have been woefully underrepresented in the curriculums; then, the curriculums have been used as proof that these "others" don't belong in the social science or literary collections. I am sorry to report that I have heard teachers say, “If they were important, they would be in the books.” Only in the last couple of decades has this overt marginalization of the non-white or non-male figure and movement been hesitantly addressed.

Corporations (including the publishers of text books) and local and national politicians have good reason to want to remove the struggle of workers and their unions from America’s story; therefore, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the incredible battle of the UFW to wrest fundamental human rights from an unscrupulous and entrenched industry and a disinterested government bureaucracy are natural targets for minimizing, then deriding, then expunging from the historical record.

It is not merely workers’ rights that corporations wish to undermine, however; all struggles for equality and basic human rights are fundamental challenges to the ideology that “might makes right” and that greed, selfishness, and personal aggrandizement are the only legitimate pillars upon which to build a society. The “laissez faire” capitalist agenda has been at the heart of our historical myth for many generations; however, with the recent help of Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer, Ronald Reagan, Howard Jarvis, Phil Gramm, and George W. Bush, it may have reached its most virulent and debased form yet. As a result, “outsiders” or the “unprivileged” (i.e., women, people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians—all those whose rights have been denied or ignored) are inconvenient to “history,” which is, of course, the “story” told by the “winners.”

These “others” are very problematic to the ironically named “free market” philosophy. If blacks have rights, then slavery is unacceptable. Downplay Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, or Paul Robeson, and you diminish their impact on America and the grotesque truth that the United States was the last “first world” nation to abandon slavery—An abolition, I might add, which took a civil war to accomplish and which many vitriolic bloggers obviously believe never really ended.

If blacks have rights, then lynchings, Jim Crow laws and systematized, supreme court-supported subjugation of these rights were an abomination. Keep in a couple of lines of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech so that we Americans can feel good about ourselves, but erase Thurgood Marshall, a remarkable champion of civil rights and an outstanding Supreme Court Justice, and you diminish the legitimacy of that on-going struggle.

If women and children have rights, then corporations can’t run sweatshops. By all means, purge from our collective memory the stories of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Ida B. Wells, or Betty Friedan. Ignore the contributions of these women, and suddenly “equal” opportunity, the right to vote, and the right to privacy are all assailable and revocable.

Give us a romanticized Pocahontas or Sacagawea, but not the songs of Buffy Sainte-Marie, the leadership of Wilma Mankiller, or the advocacy of Charlene Teeters; give us sanitized, subservient versions of Squanto and Sequoya, but not the white man’s betrayals of Powhatan, or Tecumseh, or Osceola, or Chief Joseph, or Crazy Horse, or Sitting Bull.

Speaking of Native Americans, their stories, like the stories of Asians in America and the stories of Asian Americans, are, for the most part, simply too embarrassing to America’s self-image to be honestly told in the annals of American history.

Clearly, as Patrick Buchanan said recently on The Rachel Maddow Show, “…[W]hite men were 100% of the people who wrote the constitution…. This has been a country basically built by white people.” So why mention that it was built on the backs of slaves or on the backs of their wage-slave or sharecropping progeny who became fodder for the corporate economic machine? Why mention that the machine was built on the backs of Native Americans who were cheated out of their lands, or who were “recruited” to build missions, or whose surrender was “purchased” with disease-ridden blankets, or who were simply decimated to make way for the “more deserving” white men? Why mention the Asians who built the railroads or worked the mines while being forbidden to own property or to earn citizenship? Why mention the Latinos who planted and harvested our food and made our clothing while having their basic human rights denied?

If humans have a real right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as our founding document claims, then they have a right to clean air, clean water, and safe food. They have a right to gainful employment or an alternative means to provide for themselves and their families (self-sufficient food production, communal systems, bartered services—yes, other forms can be contemplated). They have a right to a safe and healthy work place. They have a right to not be unduly exploited by the privileged and the unscrupulous. Finally, they have a right to an honest education. Unfortunately, none of these things fit the current corporate agenda.

Thoreau said, “It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience….” Free market guru Milton Friedman went much further; he unequivocally espoused the doctrine that corporations should not have a conscience. A conscience is bad for business. The title of his September 13, 1970, article in the New York Times Magazine, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” pretty much says it all, but let me clarify with a quote: “What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities?” asks Friedman. “Only people can have responsibilities.” For a ruthlessly immoral and chilling account of the intellectual underpinnings of the current mess in which we find ourselves, simply read this article. It is truly horrifying.

These accusations of “socialism” that are currently being hurled at any attempt to improve social conditions in the United States come straight from Friedman and can be found in this and similar articles. He says that anyone who claims that “business” has any social responsibility is “preaching pure and unadulterated socialism.”

One wonders if the people being orchestrated to shout down reasoned dialogue about health care in town hall meetings, or if those being encouraged to spread such hate-filled, racist, sexist, profane and venomous blog comments across the internet really understand the current status quo that they are defending. I defy any rational person to read Friedman’s article and come away with the conclusion that this is the system that they wish to defend. It is indefensible, even as the absurd philosophical exercise that Friedman offers. Yet, for Friedman, his philosophy cannot be immoral because morality has no business in business, nor does the discussion of morality have any place in the discussion of business. Period.

When reading Friedman’s essay, I am reminded of the 1832 essay by Thomas R. Dew in which, in his defense of slavery, he posited the claims that slavery was endorsed by God and Christ, that the system of slavery in the south was the most moral and democratic form of government yet devised by man, and that “a merrier being does not exist on the face of the globe than the Negro slave of the United States.” Though superficially well reasoned, the underlying assumptions, like Friedman’s, reveal themselves to be either corrupt and cynical deceptions or self-induced delusions.

Nevertheless, judging from the last thirty years, it is obvious that most corporate boards, most CEO’s, and most of the politicians on both sides of the aisle who are put in and kept in office to do the bidding of corporations subscribe wholeheartedly to this now thoroughly, because concretely and empirically, discredited philosophy of the “free” market.

So, a couple of political ideologues in Texas have been appointed to try to revise history in order to protect the privileged, corporate, economic and ideological interests of the few and to perpetuate the prejudices of the many. Big whoop—that’s par for the course.

However, under no circumstances should they be allowed to succeed. It is up to the rest of us—the true grass roots—those who still cling to rational thought—those who still have hope for a modicum of decency and morality in our society—it is up to us to see that they don’t succeed in further debasing or erasing our truer history and replacing it with one that better suits their wallets or their politics!

You can go here to help the UFW's campaign against removing Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez from the textbooks of Texas.
www.ufwaction.org/campaign/tx709/w8iksk3rh73mxm3i?

I have included a video of my "Talking Herstory" to provide a little historical perspective.

Thanks for reading, for listening, for thinking, for acting,
Tim McMullen

Bickardt's "Blissful Surrender" and McMullen's "I Don't Write Much Anymore."

2009-07-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

In a most extraordinary blog, Craig Bickhardt explored the urge to create. He opened with this question: "Do you want to write songs, or do you need to write them?" He then discussed this distinction in both concrete and spiritual terms. Here is how he ended it.

"I believe we make things because we are the pressure valve of the ultimate making of things. Through us escapes the blow-off of creative forces no one can imagine. That is our role in the big picture. There's really no self-importance in a creative act when you understand the mysterious and uncontrollable nature of it. It's all for the sake of an elemental energy in the pipeline that chooses your particular point of exit. Creative needs are like geysers in Yellowstone; warm salty mud being blown out of the way so the earth can keep its crust intact for another day. The earth doesn't respect geysers, it simply uses them. I am used, you are used; we're The Need incarnate and we'll never fully understand the unseen forces below the surface. There's no remedy for it but a blissful surrender."

copyright 2009 by craig bickhardt http://ninetymilewind.blogspot.com/

Here is my comment on Craig's blog:

Now, that's a mouthful. You have so many wonderful metaphors and similes employed in this description of the creative impulse, yet you are able to maintain that mystical sense of reverential wonder. Nice balance.

You have done songwriting as a job for most of your life; but, as you imply, the distinction between wanting to and having to does not fit many, including many professionals, who write songs. It would seem that many approach performing and writing as a glamorous road to the bigtime, like sports or acting. Most of what they turn out, in part because of the machine that homogenizes their sounds into a genre of interchangeable voices and faces and instruments, has an endless sameness to it.

Fortunately, for the inspired writer, like yourself (and hundreds of other great, dedicated, driven writers) enough of the good stuff does get through, does get heard, does get sold, to keep the dream alive.

I have chronicled in many places the decline in my own output—from 20 to 30 a year when playing regularly down to five or six a year down to one or two a year. When I went back to teaching full time (1978), I knew that I was giving up a part of the dream. You can't stop inspiration, but you can ignore it or give it short shrift. In 1980, I wrote this song,

"I Don't Write Much Anymore"

I don’t write much anymore;
Sorry, I don’t know what to say.
It’s too painful to ignore
’Cause I felt it slip away.

And you know it makes me cry—
Like a lover that’s been lost—
When the feeling’s passed you by,
And you know just what it’s cost—

It’s like you’re stumbling in the dark,
And you don’t know where to turn.
You’re looking for a spark
Just to feel it burn...
Let it burn...

Knowing that it’s gone
Is not enough to bring it back;
It’s like staring at a train
Moving miles down the track.
You can laugh or you can cry,
But that’s all that you can do,
And lying to yourself
Is never gonna’ make it less true—

It’s like you’re stumbling in the dark,
And you don’t know where to turn.
You’re looking for a spark
Just to feel it burn...
Aw, let it burn...

I don’t write much anymore.
Sorry, I don’t know what to say.
But I don’t write much anymore,
So I guess I’ll slip away.

©1980 Tim McMullen
All Rights Reserved

I was going to quote a few lines, but I decided to throw in the whole thing. I don't mean to be presumptuous—including one of my own pieces on your blog—and I hope you don't mind—but it addresses what happens when we diversify our talents. What I am suggesting is that if we have the creative impulse, it really can't die, but if we don't keep it focused (as a painter or a sculptor or a photographer or a writer), it will easily spread out to other creative impulses. For years I would get ideas that I thought would make good short stories, but I always stopped myself by saying, "I can't waste my energy on that. I'm a song writer." Who knows, maybe I'm really a short story writer in songwriter's clothing...Ha!

Two of my favorite female singer/songwriters, Joni Mitchell and Marti Jones, gave up performing and writing for years in favor of painting. Actors become writers and writers become directors, etc. Many great writer/performers like Nanci Griffith and Billy Joel get to a point where they say, "I just don't feel like doing it anymore." Fortunately for us, though, they often can't help themselves, and soon they are back at it.

Those of us who don't make a career of it, for whatever reason, can choose to be envious or inspired by the success of those we admire.

Let me just say that your fire inspires! (and yeah, this probably will become one for my blog).
Tim

Don't try to justify the unjustifiable! An answer to "Who are the real racists?

2009-07-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

On the Party builder blog of the Democratic Party, a blogger called "Democrat in San Francisco" wrote the following post:

In regards to the recent arrest of Professor Gates by Officer Crowley,
Officer Crowley said:

"He was cautioned in the house, meaning 'calm down, lower your voice.'" Once we got outside in front of the general public and the police officers that were assembled there, two warnings, the second warning with me holding a set of handcuffs in my hand. It was something I really didn't want to do, but the professor at any point in time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or going back in his house."

Who are the real racists here? Would anyone venture to say it is the African Americans? Crowley, a white police officer was racially profiled by Professor Gates. He assumed that Crowley was a racist merely by the color of his skin.

When the professor raised his voice and failed to cooperate, the officer had not other recourse than to do his duty, regardless of the man's color.

African Americans need to realize that racism is alive and well in their own community before pointing the finger and screaming "racist" at the drop of a hat.

The professor was wrong. Anyone who raises his or her voice and is uncooperative with police authorities is subject to the same discipline regardless of status, race, or color. Professor Gates was overreacting and brought this on himself. It is he that should apologize to Officer Crowley for turning this incident into a race issue.

The blogger then goes on to basically reiterate the same points (although throwing in the OJ Simpson case as an example that blacks can be racists???) see the full post here

http://www.democrats.org/page/community/members

What follows is my answer.

Dear Democrat in San Francisco—

Racism is real, and it can be found in all races, but the facts in no way bear out your assumptions. Professor Gates was not accused of disturbing the peace. Police officers had come into his home erroneously; they had verified that he was rightfully there, then they "cautioned" him (which, according to your explanation, the officer then "translates for himself" to mean "calm down, lower your voice"). Are you saying that officers can come into your home, ascertain that you have done absolutely nothing wrong, and then arrest you because you are not calm enough or quiet enough to suit them.

You say that the professor was overreacting? This is simply absurd in the extreme. Again, by his own testimony, the officer made it clear that his so-called warnings were overt threats of arrest. He made them while waving his hand-cuffs and "warning" the professor. The president's use of "stupidity" was probably an ill-chosen epithet, but it was not wrong. It was a grotesque abuse of authority. Disorderly conduct because he was wrongfully accused of being in his own house and then threatened because he was upset by this flagrant error? The instant that the officer found that they had committed the error, a simple, "I'm sorry, sir," and an immediate exit would have ended the situation. I don't care how loud he was yelling (but from what I've read of the professor, I'll bet it wasn't even that loud), his arrest was an absolute miscarriage of justice and an abuse of authority, and simply dropping the case is in no way an adequate recompense for the officer's crime. Yes, crime. False arrest and false imprisonment are crimes!

I have great sympathy for police officers, and I understand your wanting to be an apologist for the officer. It is an incredibly difficult job that we ask them to do, and the burden of good judgment is incredibly hard to maintain, but to suggest that the Professor was being a racist for being angry or that the officer was "just doing his job" is an egregious misreading of the facts in this particular case, even as you have outlined them.

To suggest that this was merely the case of an overreacting black man getting his just desserts is a good indication of just how far we still have to go before race does not color our perceptions. (By the way, lest you leap to any other racial assumptions, I am a somewhat pinkish, slightly tannish person, yet despite the obvious distinction between my flesh and the crayola color, I am nevertheless categorized by others as WHITE, a rather humorous misnomer, I might add, as are all our other "racial" colors).

Tim McMullen

I have included my song, "The Governed's Mental Getcha'" which was written when Ronald Reagan was elected, but it seems as relevant as ever.

Bobby Jameson, Science of Mind, Emerson, and Me

2009-07-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Much of my writing in the last year has been in comments on other blogs. In fact, most pieces on this blog so far, including the last post in response to Craig Bickhardt’s blog, come from such writing. Today’s piece is a personal anecdote that was added as a comment to Bobby Jameson’s latest blog post at about 3:00 this morning.

For those unfamiliar with Bobby Jameson, he offers perhaps the most interesting and eclectic blog that I have discovered. His is a truly remarkable story. He is a songwriter, recording artist, poet, video artist, autobiographer, and blogger extraordinaire. From huge success as a teenager to relative anonymity to internet resurrection, his is an alarming and cautionary tale about being a casualty of the music business, a casualty of personal excess and addiction, and it is a story of personal redemption. His telling begins in the 1950’s, and over the course of 155 posts, his personal reminiscences have brought us to about 1976.

His autobiographical blog is a painfully honest reflection upon the great possibilities and the potential dangers of a creative life. Bobby has the ability to tell a truly compelling personal story articulately and analytically, with vivid recollections and contemporary reflection. In his journey, he crossed paths with the following (and played or recorded with many of them): Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Andrew Loog Oldham, John Lennon, The Monkees, Frank Zappa, Jesse Ed Davis, Randy Newman, Red Rhodes, The Rockets/Crazy Horse, and Curt Boetcher, just to name a few. He was there at the beginning of Tony Alamo (of Tony and Susan Alamo’s Christian Crusade); he was nearly there at the end of Diane Linkletter’s (daughter of Art Linkletter) tragic suicide; he was in the middle of the Sunset Strip “riots” in the 60’s….

I could go on, but I have a much better idea. Click on the link in "My Blog List" to the right, and see for yourself.

Make no mistake: His story is neither pretty nor pleasant, but it is quite intriguing and compelling; it is often tragic; it is often frustrating; and it is just as often uplifting and encouraging.

And be forewarned; addiction is one of Bobby's themes, and once you start exploring his blog, you just might get hooked. The night that I discovered it, I spent six or seven hours straight reading his fascinating story.

Check it out!

What follows is a brief quote from Bobby’s blog and my response.

Bobby said:

"In 1976 my life was a disaster. My actions had led me to Alcoholics Anonymous and to the growing understanding that change was inevitable or else. I was living in a halfway house and attended AA meetings daily. I studied the book continuously and constantly reminded myself to turn problems over to the care of God, as I didn't understand him at the time.

"While working in the office, answering the telephone at Clare Foundation, one weekend, I came across a book called Science Of Mind, written by Ernest Holmes. Basically, it was about the Spiritual or Universal Law of Cause and Effect and how that law works. In my own oversimplification of the subject, it stated that, what one tends to focus on or think about begins to take shape over time in real terms. Thinking, the cause. Tangible evidence, the effect.

"The book said that this took place whether people were aware of it or not, so it would make sense to focus on what you wanted in your life as opposed to thinking about things you didn't want: A negative view or positive view of your own ongoing circumstances. Still, oversimplifying, I for some reason found this belief to be easily acceptable and the basis of a new adventure, which I was eager to go on."

I said:

Okay, I did not see that coming. Despite some superficial similarities, our lives have taken very different paths, but this one is a real coincidence. My grandmother and great aunt were spiritual seekers all their lives. They were vegetarians for a while in the thirties and forties. They knew Dr. Ernest Holmes personally and attended his church in Los Angeles. My parents also attended the church occasionally before I was born.

When I was in kindergarten, my parents felt that I should have a basic Christian background, so I went to the First Baptist Church in Whittier for about a year and a half. Although I learned to recite the 23rd Psalm and a few other scriptures, even at five years old I found that I could just not accept the supernatural trappings or the dogma of the church, but it did fascinate me enough that eventually Philosophy and Religious Studies became one of my minors in college.

By the time that I was in the second grade, my family all began attending the Church of Religious Science. They didn't actually have a regular church: for a year or two we met in the gallery of the Whittier Art Association. Then the venue was moved to the pastor's own home. He lived in a great old Victorian style house on about 5 acres along a stream. The adults would have their service, and the kids would have "Sunday School" classes, but they were lead by volunteers, and every couple of weeks we had a new leader. We would have a discussion about some premise, then we would be let loose to swing on the vines and play on the banks of the creek until our parents came out from the service.

Eventually, that minister, Reverend Wally Strait, passed away, and my aunt and grandmother had to find a new church. They were actually instrumental in helping to create and support several Science of Mind churches over the next twenty years.

Here's the thing. You found a profundity and a philosophical outlook that truly spoke to your condition—I told you in an earlier comment that you needed to read the text and make sense of it for yourself rather than be told by others—looks like that was true again. For me, though, it happened at a much earlier age, and it came directly from something that somebody said to me. When I was about 9 or 10, we were sitting in a "Sunday School" class—probably about six kids and one adult. It was a fairly serious discussion for ten year olds about beliefs.

After a few minutes in direct conversation with me and addressing some of my skepticism about dogma and spiritual claims, this "leader" said something to the effect that "Nobody can tell you what to believe. Not your parents, not your teachers, not your minister nor your Sunday school teacher, not your friends. Not anybody! Only you can decide what is right and true for you!" This, of course, mirrored my own philosophy; yes, by ten-years old, I had developed a personal philosophy. Years later, when I came to study the American transcendentalists, I found that this admonition to “Trust Thyself” echoed the teachings of Emerson in his remarkable essay, “Self Reliance.” This essay had a significant effect on Ernest Holmes as well. As for me, this revelation, at 10 years old, sent me on a lifetime quest to understand the myriad perceptions of truth and to try to reconcile them with my own sense of the world.

I have attended many different denominations, with friends and in my course of study, but I never found a religious doctrine that was more personally empowering than Ernest Holmes and the Science of Mind.

For fifty years my great aunt had a thin strip of card on her refrigerator emblazoned with the fading letters: LIDGTTFTATIM. As a joke we kids would refer to it and pronounce phonetically as “Le-jit-fa-tat-um,” but we all knew what it meant. When she went into the hospital, I made a large copy of the phrase to put on her hospital wall. The meaning: "Lord, I Do Give Thee Thanks For The Abundance That Is Mine." She made miraculous recoveries (truly astounding the doctors and thereapists) from broken hips at the age of 91 and 95. She died two years ago at the age of 102, and her positive attitude right to the last was a wonder to behold.

I generally don't use profanity, but I just can't help it on this closing (it seems to fit my basic, non-believer status so well)....Really, Bobby, Science of Mind? Well, I'll be damned!

Tim

JULY 12, 2009 3:06 AM

Inspiration, Cockburn, and Muehleisen—A Blog Comment to Craig Bickhardt's Ninety-Mile Wind

2009-07-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Craig Bickhardt is a great writer. He spent many years in Nashville as a highly successful songwriter, having placed songs with scores of top performers including Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, David Wilcox, Poco, Baillie and the Boys, The Judds, Nicolette Larson, ad infinitum. A few years ago he gave up the Nashville gig, went back to Pennsylvania, and began performing full time. He writes a great blog for songwriters (and anyone else interested in the art of creation or the creation of art). It is called Ninety-Mile Wind (http://ninetymilewind.blogspot.com/) You can use the link on "My Blog List" on the lower right hand corner of this site.

I often feel compelled to comment on his insightful and inspiring pieces. This is a response that I wrote to his blog post entitled, "All the Spells." If you want to see the full context for the following remarks, check out Craig's blog first. Otherwise, check it out later, but by all means, check it out!

Craig—
Emerson and Thoreau linked inspiration, instinct, conscience—all things transcendental. In a sense, that is part of your point. If we make our constructs too rational, too conscious, they tend to become mechanical. On the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult to maintain that spark of inspiration throughout the creation of a completed song.

When working with young writers, I often encounter two warring impulses. On the one hand, it is hard for many beginners to get started. On the first day of class, I write only one short imperative sentence on the board: Stifle the critic! We discuss the possible meanings and implications of that statement for about twenty minutes, then we begin to write.

On the other hand, once they do get going, it is sometimes difficult to get them to revise or hone their work because they have a reverence for their "inspiration." "That's the way it came out of me!" I do understand the impulse; however, not meaning to be crude but needing to be clear, I point out that many things "come out of us," but we don't immortalize them simply because "that's the way it came out."

Holding onto the inspiration or maintaining "the heart" while crafting the exterior shell that effectively conveys it is an unfathomable mystery. The occasional song that simply writes itself, yet is as good as our best work, is an inexplicable miracle. Unfortunately, many a piece that spills out of us is a second or third-rate effort; the spilling itself is no guarantee of authenticity or worth (I mean this in the aesthetic sense, not the monetary one).

Though deeply and inherently cynical and skeptical, I have always been easily moved, and as I grow older, I find that I am more and more susceptible. Watching a movie, listening to a human interest story on the radio, the dénouement of a TV show, and most often, through song, that lump in the throat or the tear in the eye is an alarmingly common and daily occurrence for me. Thirty years ago, I wrote this fragment, “Loosing (or losing) a tear at some other fool’s pain,” that attempts, lightheartedly, to convey that feeling, but I have never taken it upon myself to incorporate it into a song.

When I get a new Nanci Griffith album, for example, I can be fairly sure that by the second song she'll have me in tears, and that it will continue repeatedly throughout the album. The same is true for a handful of writers including Cheryl Wheeler and Jesse Winchester. It's not maudlin; it's not merely melancholy; it's simply that beautiful mix of emotion, melody, poetry, and voice that speaks to the head and the heart simultaneously. Ironically, several of my very favorite songwriters, Danny O'Keefe, Townes Van Zandt, Jackson Browne, Loudon Wainwright, Joni Mitchell, Guy Clark, only occasionally hit that button, but I still connect deeply with their work—not to diminish their melodic creations, but I think, perhaps, I enjoy them more for the sheer force of their amazing wordsmithing.

Funny that you should mention Bruce Cockburn in this regard. I first saw him do a solo acoustic version of a song called, "He Came From the Mountains," on Ian Tyson's show, Nashville North, around 1970 while I was attending Chico State in California. I vowed on the spot that if I could write and perform a song like that I might consider becoming a believer. Some of Jesse Winchester's songs have that same pure, spiritual but non-"religious" quality. Though I wrote several of my very best songs at about the same time, I am afraid that the conversion did not take place.

Look as I might, and I am an avid collector, I could find nothing from Cockburn. Then, in late 1970 on the same day, I found Bruce Cockburn's first album as well as the only solo album by Maury Muehleisen, later to become Jim Croce's musical partner. Maury's songwriting on Gingerbreadd had a profound effect on Croce's own writing. I was blown away by both Cockburn and Muehleisen that day: That combination of musicality and poetry was at the heart of their work.

A few years later, after my own brief foray into full-time performing, I was using Cockburn's album, Sunwheel Dance, with my students: having them listen to his album while I projected the lyrics onto a screen. Since then, the wide-range of his musical forays, whether unmelodic chanting, angry political diatribes, religious affirmations, devout love songs, or whimsical ditties, have always maintained that poetic sensibility.

"If I had a rocket launcher,
Some son-of-a-bitch would die"

may be hard to reconcile with

"In His world we wait
In His hands our fate
Keep on climbing
We shall see His gate
In good time...."

but in the marvelous, creative universe of Bruce Cockburn, they share a very clear aesthetic based on deep and abiding inspiration.

Clearly, Craig, you have been surprisingly successful at finding that mix of heart and head, even in your more "commercial" outings, but I think that your new CD, Brother to the Wind, may have come closest so far to that perfect mix on nearly every tune. Thanks, not only for the thoughtful treatises on the art and the craft of songwriting, but for being such a consistent example of "practicing what you preach."
Tim McMullen
7/9/2009

"Stranger Blues" Homage to Mark Spoelstra

2009-06-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

My version of "Stranger Blues" was learned originally from the singing of Mark Spoelstra. This song opens with one of the finest blues lines of all time, "Ain't it hard to stumble when you ain't got no place to fall?" which was even appropriated by Bob Dylan for his "Outlaw Blues." Dylan may well have gotten this line from Spoelstra since they hung around and played the same New York venues, occasionally as a duet, when Dylan first came to New York.

One of the most striking things about Mark Spoelstra was his 12-string guitar playing. He didn't play like Leadbelly, nor like Pete Seeger who helped to poplularize Leadbelly's style, nor Erik Darling who had that great riff to open "Walk Right In" with the Rooftop singers, nor Jim (Roger) McGuinn in his folk nor his Byrd days, or Reverend Gary Davis's rockin' ragtime. There was a little bit of Blind Willie McTell, a little bit of Jessie Fuller, with quite a bit of Mississippi John Hurt thrown in, but Mark's drop-thumb blues and folk stylings were really not derivative; they were unique. It's important to note that although his style may have been similar to some of the old blues pickers, he developed his style and began his recording career before these old blues men had their revival at Newport and elsewhere.

To emphasize Spoelstra's acknowledged virtuosity as a guitar player, think about the other folk, blues, or topical singers of the era: Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Sainte Marie, Tom Rush, Joan Baez. Mark Spoelstra included several instrumentals on each of his first four albums. This was relatively unheard of. Either you were a singer/songwriter (the aforementioned folkies) who could play, or you were an instrumentalist who occasionally sang (Danny Kalb, John Fahey, Sandy Bull, Leo Kottke, and a generation later, Michael Hedges). Only the great Canadian singer/songwriter, topical songwriter, and instrumentalist, Bruce Cockburn, a decade later, would approximate Spoelstra's mix of strikingly individualistic instrumentals and powerful songwriting.

My rendition is not a copy of Mark's version. I have never been disciplined enough, nor have I found it interesting enough, to try to learn someone else's songs verbatim. Heck, I don't even learn my own songs carefully enough to replicate them repeatedly. I know this may sound weird, but pretty much every performance for me is an improvisation. When I do someone else's song, I get the feel of the song, try to get a reasonable approximation of the chords, and then I arrange the song to suit me. In fact, this one was worked up as part of a classroom lecture that I gave to my American Studies High School Honors class—The entire 1993 performance can be found on my YouTube site.

I found the lyrics in one of the many folk song collections that I have accumulated over the years. Since I don't read music, I collected the books just because I had an avid interest in music and because I have the collector's disease (you can check with my wife about our house and our storage unit filled with the 6000 vinyl records; the 4000 CD's; the 2000 DVD's; the many thousands of reel to reel, cassette, beta, VHS, VHS-C, 8mm, Hi-8, SVHS, SVHS-C, Digital 8, and mini-DV tapes, and mp3's; not to mention the five thousand books, hundreds of pieces of art glass, novelty cartoon glasses, etc....).

So this arrangement was really just created by me reading the lyrics and vaguely recalling Mark's great version of the song. I had already performed this piece for several years before I went back and actually listened to his version.

The great thing about this new digital age is that so much that would have been lost can reemerge. Mark Spoelstra's first four albums, two on Folkways and two on Elektra, are available on Amazon, as is his final recording, Out of My Hands. I enjoy them all, but if you are interested enough to see what a truly committed conscientious objector who was also an extremely talented songwriter sounds like, I would encourage you to listen to Five and Twenty Questions, his first album for Elektra. It has his most fervent anti-war songs as well as one of his most compelling story songs, an epic tale of racism and poverty culled from his two years of alternative service as a conscientious objector. Another historical point, he refused induction and served alternative service in 1965 and 1966, several years before David Harris (Baez's husband) introduced "the resistance movement" encouraging people to turn in or burn their draft cards (I'll share my own resistance story some day).

But this post and this performance are dedicated to Mark Spoelstra, who deserves to be remembered for his musical and moral contributions to America and the world.

The Passing of Mark Spoelstra

2009-06-26T01:10:00.000-07:00

Originally posted April 29, 2007 - Sunday

Although he died over two months ago, I only found out yesterday. This is the letter that I wrote to his family. I include it as an homage to a great folksinger.

To Mark Spoelstra's family—

It was with greatest sorrow that I just read on his website about Mark's passing (http://www.markspoelstra.net). I was checking to see if he had gotten around to setting up a MySpace site in the hopes of "befriending him" MySpace style; instead, I found your notice of his untimely demise.

He was one of the true greats, though perhaps the most unsung, of the 60's folk boom. I had the opportunity to see him in the 60's at the Ash Grove. Then, in the late 60's/early 70's he played a gig at the Rosewood forest in Santa Rosa. The club was owned by Bob Ward of "Bob Ward and the Cigar Band," and my brother, Tucker McMullen, was the Cigar Band (lead guitar, harmonica and harmony vocal). My then-wife and I drove over from Chico to see Mark, who had been one of our idols since '63-'64. I had been performing "White Wing Dove," "My Love is Like a Dewdrop," and "Stranger Blues" for years, and my wife and I had a duet version of Mark's take on "Mobile Line." He was very gracious at the concert. We spent an hour or so with him backstage, including his encouraging us to play a couple of original songs to which he listened and gave honest feedback. He struck me as a genuinely sincere and humble person.

His stand as a conscientious objector was also a true inspiration to me, and my own handing in of my draft card and refusing induction into the military was in significant measure owing to his example.

By 1971, we had moved back down to LA, and I had begun to play the local clubs: The Golden Bear, The Troubadour, McCabe's, The Ice House, etc. Suddenly, when disco hit, nearly all the LA folk clubs either turned disco or rock or closed down, so, not being particularly ambitious, and having quit teaching to take a turn at music, I gave up the quest and returned to teaching. Mark, like his contemporary, Patrick Sky, seemed also to have hung it up; that is, there was no sign of him on the music scene for a great long while. Dylan remained a reclusive superstar, Phil Ochs killed himself, Buffy St. Marie went on Sesame Street, and Tom Paxton was about the only old folkie that kept plugging away.

Then, a few years ago, since I continued to run google searches fairly regularly to see if anything was going on with Mark, I found a site that listed a couple of "gospel" type cassettes, but they were not actually available, just mentioned. A couple of years later, I found "Out of My Hands." Here he was after twenty years, the same gentle flowing voice and the same bluesy, drop thumb guitar: A style, by the way, that had a huge influence on my own playing. It was a great pleasure to find him back on the scene.

Then, last year, a friend phoned to say that Mark Spoelstra was playing in Southern California in Claremont. I jumped at the chance to see him again. He was great that night; still totally unassuming and laid back in his delivery, yet masterful. It was clear that he was really up and enjoying himself. He even read some poetry. As a creative writing teacher for the last twenty-five years, I enjoyed seeing one of my idols hit on the idea of combining songwriting and poetry (which I also do with my creative writing and honors English students). After the concert we spoke for twenty or thirty minutes. He seemed very happy to be back performing music, and he seemed to be excited about plans for pursuing his muse. He actually gave me his card and asked me to get in touch. I, of course, never did. Now my belated praise and admiration comes in the form of a eulogy of sorts. I am pleased that I was able to tell him, both in 1970 and 2006 how much his music meant to me. I am pleased to now tell you the same. You have a great deal of which to be proud.

Mark Spoelstra's professional greatness and his personal goodness will soon convert grief to joy in remembrance of the meaningful but fleeting encounters that I had with him, I trust the same is true a hundred-fold for his family and friends who knew him well.

Deepest regards,
Tim McMullen

The Burning Bush (A Song of Praise for Unrepentant Arrogance)

2009-06-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Burning Bush
by Tim McMullen

Started 2003, revised 2007

I have seen the burning Bush
Reflecting the light of God
He blazed away in the light of day
But the words seemed rather odd

('Cuz he said) "If I suspect in days to come
That you might wish me ill,
From my fear alone God does condone
My authority to kill…
You and anyone who looks like you
And your children's children's children if I could
Unto the tenth generation of them that hate me!"
And the Bush saw it was good,
Then he put on his white hood….

"Why, they deserve elimination
They are an abomination…
Abombination here, Abombination there,
Ah (I) bomb a nation everywhere.
Here a nation, there a nation,
Everywhere I bomb a nation!"

I have heard the Burning Bush
Pronouncing impending doom
For birds and bees and the forests for the trees
The earth one blooming tomb.
And science? It's an affront to God
Whose glory runs on gasoline.
"My buddy, God, he gives the nod
To scourge the land and pick it clean

"For they deserve elimination
They are an abomination…
Abombination here, Abombination there
Global domination everywhere
With "shocks and awes" on Nature's flaws
We lie and deny the polar thaws!"
Such hypocrisy must give us pause…

Yea, I have seen the burning Bush
Rejecting the light of God
He blazed away in the light of day
But the words were disturbingly odd
Destroying "Thy staff and Thy rod"
With reasoning fatally flawed
New blasphemies yet untrod
Such effronteries to God
While patriot preachers applaud
The apocalypse here and abroad
The result of slack-jawed fraud

Yeah, I have seen the burning Bush

Music in a Time of War?

2009-06-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

Music in a time of War? (a response to the Music: Acoustic Forum)

Originally posted March 2, 2007 - Friday

Where to begin? This thread prompted a great number of varying responses and varying tones; many were amusing, thoughtful, and/or provocative; nevertheless, I feel compelled to respond to some of the more glib and cynical posts. The '67 hit list is very telling; however, if you look at any hit list, then or now, as musicians or fans of music, you will realize that most of the best written and most moving songs are not the biggest hits. The music business is designed to discourage originality or complex thought. If you want to have a hit, you'll never write a topical song. You'll write some derivative, imitation of ten other pop songs. Occasionally, someone writes a strikingly original song that has some modest success. But, if your goal is commercial success, avoid topical songs like the plague. If, on the other hand, you write because you have to, because you have a story to tell, or because you have an idea to convey, or a feeling to share, then the real question is, "Do songs affect people?" The obvious answer is, "Yes, they can." Thankfully, the internet has given writers a way to circumvent the limitations of the "record business."

Some of the analysis of the '60's is accurate. The draft was a significant motivator for opposition to the war; furthermore, the earlier civil rights and free speech movements lent legitimacy to political action used for social change. As for writing the songs off as "preaching to the choir," this is a gross overstatement and misperception. Of all the most significant topical songwriters of the Vietnam era—Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Mark Spoelstra, Buffy Sainte Marie—their topical songs on all topics—environment, race, labor, war—were always a small minority of their full repertoire. This is also true of later topical writers like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, or Loudon Wainwright.

The point about songs with meaning, whether a love song or a protest song, is that they are always a communication between the writer and the individual listener. The suggestion that "your song didn't stop the war" is actually a silly one. What your song can do is make someone think, feel, respond. If, after hearing your song, a seed of doubt has been planted, or a new perspective has been recognized, or an empathy has been felt, that is a real impact. Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton didn't stop the war, but their inspiration, their example, their witnessing, their arguments, their stories moved and motivated many thousands of people, who, in turn, moved and motivated many thousands of others. Make no mistake, the protest, despite all the effort to stifle it, did alter the course of the war, did directly affect both Johnson and Nixon, and did leave a legacy, no matter how much the revisionist Reaganizing of an alternative historical reality has attempted to lay waste to that legacy.

The most ironic thing about topical songs is that their relevancy should instantly fade; the most tragic thing about the human condition is that the topical song becomes relevant again and again. My song, "Blood Red," which was originally written during Reagan's incursions into Nicaragua, is as relevant to Iraq and Afghanistan as it was to our Latin American invasions or the first "gulf war" (with the exception of the reference to "patriotic yachting crews" which explicitly ties it to Dennis Connor and the America's cup). A performance of the song is included below. Many people today tell me that they are especially moved by that song, and it is a song of open anger and angst, as opposed to what I consider to be even more moving songs like Paxton's tragic, character-driven vignettes like "Jimmy Newman" or "My Son John."

The suggestion that, in the end, Sha Na Na is more significant than Country Joe because the rock and roll pastiche makes you feel better than the song that makes you think, seems to offer some fairly skewed values, or at best, an explanation as to why the general masses have not called for impeachment of a proven liar whose failed policies have killed more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. In the end, music can communicate on many levels: both butt music and brain music, gut music and pain music; all have their place. But few uses of music, or literature of any kind, are more valid than those which challenge, provoke, or change us.

The Greatest threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!