Kevin Marshall's America
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=vpRlTW-VTP0
Shit People Watching a “Shit _____People Say” Video Say (by DeputyMarshall)
GUYS IT’S A MEME
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
In one of his many blog posts about the troubling dichotomy between Ron Paul the public figure and Ron Paul the guy who let the craziest shit ever be printed under his name, The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates (himself a historian) wrote the following:
It is often said that Americans aren’t interested in history, but I think it’s more accurate to say that people–in general–aren’t interested in history that makes them feel bad. We surely are interested in those points of history from which we are able to extract an easy national glory–our achievement of independence from the British, the battle of Gettysburg, our fight against Hitler, and even the campaign of nonviolence waged by Martin Luther King. For different reasons, each of these episodes can be fitted for digestibility. More importantly that can be easily deployed in service our various national uses. Thus it is not so much that we are against history, as we are in favor of a selective history. The fact is that Martin Luther King is useful to us, in a way that Bayard Rustin is not (yet.)
The Founding Fathers, moments before they all simultaneously ascended to Heaven.
It got me to thinking about how infuriating it is for me to hear people go on and on about actual events as if they were holy miracles handed down from on high and how they will not only actively ignore the negatives and the failures in our country’s history, but actually try to write it out of our history as some are trying to do in Tennessee (and already has been done elsewhere in the country).
I’d say we’re children when we come to our history, except a child is much more willing to take things like facts and details into account rather than deifying figures until they become indistinguishable to the type of mythological figures that make it hard to distinguish Greek history from its fables and epics. I can’t wait, for instance, to read Bill O’Reilly’s next historical trope about the time Thomas Jefferson washed ashore in the land of the Phaeacians and John Quincy Adams, against the advice of his father, rode his horse too close to the Sun and crashed in a fireball of flame and hubris.
If I had my druthers, I’d go so far as to strike the term “Founding Fathers” from any text that wants to be taken seriously as an account of our history. It lends a patronizing and jingoistic tone that I feel is unfair to history and the development of our own nation. This country has evolved from radical ideas; some of them worked, some of them didn’t. The Constitution itself is a compromise that arose from the failure of the Articles of Confederacy (our version of the Old Testament), not a hallowed document written on a stone tablet vis a vis lightning on a mountaintop.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini, Florence, Italy
TONIGHT! Comedy open mic at Bat Shea’s on Ferry St. in historic downtown Troy. Come by, get some loaded tots (seriously – they’re AWESOME) and enjoy some free comedy from a litany of the area’s best comedians including yours truly. Show starts at 7:00pm.
ALSO: I’ll be performing at Villa Valenti’s (in Troy) on Monday February 6th and at Tierra Coffee Roasters (Madison Ave. in Albany; the former Muddy Cup) on Friday, February 17th. Both are free shows!
For more details and other gigs, CLICK HERE.
Rev. Alan Rudnick, a local figure and blogger for the Times Union, shared a spoken word video called “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus” from fellow preacher Jefferson Bethke.
Though many will jump on this bandwagon of, “Yeah, we hate religion too… but love Jesus” let’s not forget that you cannot separate Jesus from religion. Why? We cannot forget what the word religion means, according to Webster: (1) the service and worship of God or the supernatural, commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance (2): a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
As you can see, if you believe in Jesus, you are a religious person. Somewhere in the craziness of history, being “religious” meant that you were a ignorant fool who is a hypocrite. Many have equated religion to mean, “a rigid dogma that has nothing to do with me”. What Jesus spoke out against was the abuse of religion and its leaders who did not follow what they taught.
Alan has the video and links to a Facebook clarification from Bethke on what he meant. The blog also evokes an interesting discussion on faith and religion in the comments section, which is amazing considering it’s a Times Union blog. If I weren’t an Atheist I would attribute it to some form of divine intervention.
To me what it comes down to is not the difference between religion and spirituality, but rather the difference between religion as spirituality and religion as institutionalization, politics, and control. It’s a distinction that we really only started to make in the latter half of the twentieth century. Throughout history, for better or for worse, the two have been intrinsically linked and mutually inclusive. Some would point to the Protestant Reformation as the real start of the more earnest separation of the two, though that would be giving much more credit and foresight than is probably deserved since that movement was very much based in political and institutional revolt inasmuch as it was the religious aspects.
I think we need to keep that in mind when discussing this, because otherwise we’ll prescribe intent retroactively. That can be dangerous and cloud us from seeing what’s really happening here, which is that after literally thousands of years of religion being used as a method of maintaining or growing a power structure, political mobilization, and/or building empires, human beings have reached a point where they can finally make the separation that they’re told exists between religion as a force and religion as a faith.
It’s certainly going to be an interesting next hundred years or so.
Look: it’s been a day. I’m just going to copy and paste this right from MANvilleShow.com. Go ahead and sue me, self.
Uou should listen to this episode because it’s fucking hilarious and fantastic.
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Tom Chiarella
SUPER SPECIAL GUEST: Esquire‘s Tom Chiarella
your hosts: Johnny Hustle, Kevin Marshall, Gamejak Dan, and Harlowe
This week’s guest is Esquire columnist Tom Chiarella, who was introduced to the show by our esteemed co-host Johnny Hustle trolling him on Twitter about a Tim Tebow article he wrote. We talk about Tom’s article, writing for Esquire, mainstream coverage of sports and Tebow in particular, and lots lots more. ALSO: Gamejak Dan finally snaps and turns heel, Johnny Hustle thinks dogs talk like old black men, and Kevin Marshall offends EVERYONE.
Direct Download (right click, save as…)
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Joe Paterno is dead, and I’d like to take this moment to ask many of you reading this to spare us the farcical tributes and forced empathy.
For decades, Paterno’s public image was the ambling, grandfatherly figure at the sideline of Penn State games. He was a throwback to a bygone era, when the sidelines were monitored without headphones and microphones and under the command of respectable old men whose scowl was maintained until the moment the final whistle blew. He became a living Saint in college sports because people wanted to believe in him and outlets like ESPN with a vested interest in maintaining myths and facades were all too eager to comply.
Then we found out he thought it was okay for little boys get raped.
Well…perhaps that’s not entirely fair. What really happened is that his pal and former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, engaged in unconscionable sexual acts with small children: molested them, raped them in showers, and not only destroyed lives but may ave created more monsters like himself. It was Sandusky that preyed on the young, the innocent, the confused, and the tearful.
Not Joe Paterno. All he did, when he was told about these awful things, was nothing. He decided that a slight inconvenience to himself and the Nittany Lions program was far too much to justify reporting a serial rapist. It’s not as if he stood watching with his hands in his pockets smiling while children as young as eleven years old and possibly younger were raped. Quite the opposite: he stood with his back to the abuse, smiling with his hands in his pockets while encouraging everyone else to look away.
Continue reading »
Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor of SOPA, said on Friday that he is pulling the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution.”
“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy,” Smith (R-Texas) said. “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”
Good job, everyone!
“You know,” says the asshole online, “if people directed the same energies at this that they directed at things like war and blah blah blah we’d be etcetera and so forth.”
Idiot, this was something universally reviled and viewed as a mistake. Unlike this issue, others don’t have the same level of opposition. Sometimes people agree overwhelmingly on some issues and not on others. And that’s okay.
Score one for freedom and jobs and America and stuff.
One of the good things about Google Plus is the ability to limit your audience for certain posts; for example, there was something that was getting a lot of coverage and praise in this area that seemed to excite certain people whose feelings I didn’t want to hurt by pointing out that it was…well, kind of lame and not interesting at all. In fact, it was a bit forced and a little irritating.
I run into this a lot and, more often than not, write it off as me being a negative nancy or unnecessarily cynical. Which I am and I am. More and more often, though, I’m sharing this with the limited circle on Google Plus and finding that…well, I’m far from alone in this sentiment.
A friend of mine who has since moved from the area (much to my dismay) shared his thoughts on the matter and was good enough to put into words what I’ve been feeling for a long, long time:
“I want to be different, just like all of the other different people.” It is a critical truism in the Capital Region that local media is WAY too forgiving of the limitations of many local artists and performers. This is one such item: “s/he is one of us, so we must talk about how wonderful s/he is!” Problem with that approach is that it damns the legitimately talented locals to faint praise in comparison to the lauded mediocrities.
I want us all to really, really think about this, because I see it a lot and it’s unnecessary. We’re a tertiary market (if that), but that doesn’t mean we have to be and act small-town and do backflips just because someone local is trying to make something go viral (like that fucking awful Saratoga lip dub video from a few months ago).
Local media: just because something is happening doesn’t make it worthy of praise. Just because it’s local doesn’t mean it’s off limits from critique. Just because a band is from the Albany area doesn’t mean you have to pretend they’re good and grit out teeth through performances and hold our noses while posting about them. The important aspect of my friend’s thoughts isn’t that the bad and the mundane gets unwarranted attention and praise, it’s that there’s enough good in this area to make that unnecessary.
Let’s focus on that. Please.
STALK ME
