By Paul J. Williams on September 17, 2008 11:07 AM
In the latest federal bailout of a failing business, Paste has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act wherein the RIAA requests an influx of capital to keep the music industry from collapsing.
According to the documents, attorneys for the Big 4 music companies argue that if the government is willing to take steps to protect Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and AIG, who are only suffering because of their own risky investments and bad decision making, then it should do the same for other poorly run businesses.
“Look, you want to talk about your subprime investments—we put out a new Mötley Crüe album. We put out a Jessica Simpson country album,” an industry attorney writes. “We believe those more than compare to any no-down-payment, no-credit-check packaged derivative when it comes to a stupid use of shareholder money.”
The filing states that, in much the same way segments of the financial sector refused to acknowledge market forces when considering potential buyouts and write-downs and invested in products it didn’t understand, the music industry consistently avoided properly pricing CDs and downloads and didn’t understand how the Internet changed its business landscape.
The RIAA also warns that if the music industry implodes, it could cause a ripple effect through the economy.
“If the music industry collapses, the next domino would be local FM radio. Do you know the fear and panic that would be caused by having 10,000 morning drive-time DJs out roaming the streets?”
By the looks of that scratch, the rear bumper had a part in saving your life, too.
This car emblem was spotted in the parking lot of the main post office in downtown Birmingham today. I saw the car on my way in to the P.O. with an armload of mail. As I stood in line, I kept watching the door to see if any of the people leaving looked to me like radical fundamentalist Christians. Of course that’s a generalization! Sue me – I just wanted to beat them out the door and photograph the bumper. Turns out that I did.
As I was taking the picture, an elderly black man (who I would not have pegged as a radical fundamentalist Christian, not really knowing what one looks like) came ambling out of the P.O. toward the car. As he reached for his keys and the car door, he never diverted his gaze from me, standing behind his car taking a photograph. I said, “Hello! I’m just taking a picture of your car emblem. Not your license plate.” Yeah, I thought to myself, I’m going to run your plate number through the computer, find out where you live, and send over a commission of rabbis and imams. Don’t fear me. He waved at me with a smile and said, “Have a blessed day!”
Now, about that car emblem. It’s certainly not an award-winner for subtlety. Maybe it is enough to say that it stopped me dead in my tracks, even with my arms full of mail. Beyond that, I am still so disturbed by the tactless combination of image and verbiage that I feel a Keith Olbermann-style rant coming on.
A two-year-old Beatles fan sings the freecreditreport.com song (the “SUV” version) in Esperanto. (Gimme the flippin’ candy bar, Mom, or I’ll honk this damn car horn all morning!)
Meg loves the freecreditreport.com song (the “SUV” version again), even if she doesn’t quite get it right (she is also two). But it’s no wonder she’s confused about the lyrics – the poor kid is being tortured with peas for dinner, and has been seated right next to an unshielded electrical outlet.
Eight-year-old Zett sings “SUV,” complete with backup singers and a real working car!
Gavin sings TWO freecreditreport.com songs (“I married my dream girl” and “SUV”), but it doesn’t seem that he knows what he’s singing about. Somebody get the kid some Visine!
Kaia, an eight-year-old, performs the freecreditreport.com commercial (the “Pirates in a restaurant” version) in its entirety at the school talent show. The best part’s at the end.
Lose your house, lose your vote
By Eartha Jane Melzer, The Michigan Messenger
September 10, 2008, 6:42 AM
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day….
…“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”
A “Cocky Wacko” On The GOP Ticket
Posted by Vaughn Ververs, CBS News
September 11, 2008, 4:18 PM
Former Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee, who left the GOP after being defeated for re-election in 2006, called Sarah Palin a “cocky wacko,” but admitted that she has told a Washington audience Tuesday that while Sarah Palin has revived a “lackluster McCain candidacy,” the AP reports.
Bipolar Disorder Tied to Age of Fathers
By Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times
Published: September 8, 2008
The older a man is, the more likely he is to father children who develop bipolar disorder as adults, a large Swedish study reports. Previous studies have found an association between paternal age and both autism and schizophrenia, but this is the first time a connection with bipolar illness has been suggested. The study appears in the September issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.
Man stabs himself as deputies show up to arrest him
Posted by Carol Robinson, Birmingham News
September 11, 2008 4:48 PM
A man wanted on an outstanding attempted murder charge stabbed himself with a 12-inch butcher knife as law officers tried to take him into custody today….
…”It isn’t often we save a criminal from himself,” [sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Randy] Christian said. “There has to be some irony in that.”
I am an unprotected wound, sliced
with the hurt, the sting, the pain
of others. Is that a tear? Yes.
I hear the cries in the dusty air,
I hear cries echoing in the ruins.
I hear cries and I weep, without control, without shame.
– Thomas Flynn
It was my intention to not post today. Unlike the last few years past, this year, on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, I feel keenly aware of those events. I felt the need to be quiet.
The air here is heavy with moisture, and it is hot. The neighborhood is very quiet. Are we all tuned in to the same wavelength?
On my way up to the office this morning, I noticed a new nest of wasps under the stairs on the side of the garage. After checking the mail and scribbling down my to-do list, I rode to the hardware store to get some wasp-and-hornet spray, in preparation for my own terrorist attack on the insect marauders. The solemnity of the day caused me to pause, however, before I decided to destroy the nest.
On the way home, I heard Robin Young of NPR’s Here and Now interviewing Thomas Flynn, a CBS writer and producer. Flynn was at his Manhattan apartment on the day the planes hit. He jumped on his bicycle and headed straight to the scene, arriving in the area as thousands were fleeing. With a journalist’s eye, he observed the horrific unfolding of events. He ducked for cover as the dust and debris clouds extended from the site, and was nearly suffocated and buried inside of a parking garage, Vesuvius-style. Flynn, fortunate, eventually made his way from the site.
This year, seven years later, Flynn published his experiences from that day as a prose poem called Bikeman. It is interesting that a journalist, instead of writing his observations of that day in a traditional journalistic way, chose to communicate the wonder and horror of his experience in a literary style akin to Dante’s Inferno. In his interview with Robin Young, Flynn mentions that it was, in fact, his recent reading of Inferno that was the catalyst for this literary creation.
Dark, profound it was, and cloudy, so that though I fixed my sight on the bottom I did not discern anything there.
From tonight’s Keith Olbermann’s commentary on MSNBC’s Countdown (10 September 2008):
Thus, Sen. McCain, were you able to accomplish a further inversion of reality at your party’s nominating convention last week.
There was the former Mayor of the City of New York, the one who took no counter-terrorism measure in his seven years in office between the first attack on the World Trade Center, and the second attack.
Nothing, except to insist, despite all advice and warning, that his Emergency Command Center be moved directly into the World Trade Center.
Yet there was this man, Sir, Rudolph Giuliani, quite succinctly dismissed as “A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11” [by current Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden], and repudiated even by Republican voters, transformed into the keynote speaker, Sen. McCain at your convention.
And his childish, squealing, braying, Tourette’s-like repetition of 9/11 (TM), was greeted not as conclusive evidence that he is consumed by massive guilt – hard-earned guilt, in fact but rather as some kind of political tour-de-force, an endorsement of your Vice Presidential nominee, a rookie governor, a facile and slick con artist.
The blind endorsing the bland, to a chorus of 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM), 9/11 (TM.)
At least, it was on that day.
And it was the side view mirror, but that’s neither lyrical or poetic.
Heading north on 22nd Street toward University Blvd.
Friday, 5 September 2008.
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.
Then,
In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.
But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.
“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Olbermann said that moment — and the perception that he is “not utterly neutral” — restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights.
“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.
The 9/11 film, from the Republican National Convention, followed by Olbermann’s brief commentary:
This kind of honest commentary from Keith Olbermann would fit right in on Countdown and is why so many people tune in to his show. It is no surprise that Countdown is MSNBC’s highest-rated program, given that Olbermann knows and has cultivated his audience. I don’t doubt that the NBC heads would have let the thing go if it had happened within the confines of his show, but to step over the line during a prime-time major network broadcast and speak editorially for the entire company is probably what did Olbermann in. The good news is that his recent contract extension will keep him on Countdown for a few more years, at least, and he’ll still be around to terrorize Pat Buchanan as a commentator during the big broadcasts.
Mid-afternoon lunch accessories on the V. Richards patio.
Friday, 5 September 2008, Birmingham, Alabama.
Oddly, I ended up at this table after first choosing a table near the patio fountain. I ended up moving to the opposite end of the patio when I discovered I was seated near a chronic chain smoker. Turned out that the smoker was “He,” the inert conversational partner from an earlier V. Richards experience of mine, chronicled in this post.
