Why Do Young People Have Such Contempt For The Republican Party? That's Easy

Last month Paul Ryan's corporately funded, sleazy SuperPAC ran thousands of dollars of really nasty radio ads beating up on progressive Democrat Kara Eastman for having been in a punk band, Pieces of Fuck, when she was in college. Ryan's PAC is desperate to save the Omaha congressional seat-- which is quickly slipping from their grasp-- for failed Trump rubber-step Don Bacon. That's why they've dug up something inocuous from when Kara was in school. What clowns they are-- and they pulled they same sort of silliness on Beto O'Rourke yesterday, in both cases to get voters' minds off the issues that contrast Kara with Bacon and Beto with Cruz.



Today, Philip Trapp, at Alternative Press, wrote about the GOP's rock'n'roll problem. The Texas Republican Party must have thought they were helping their pathetic U.S. Senate candidate-- and former mime-- Ted Cruz, by "tweeting photos of O’Rourke skating, rocking and just generally appearing relatable (as opposed to being a two-faced morality robot) in what seems a misguided effort to discredit the congressman and save Cruz’s [rapidly shrinking] lead."

Failed mime failed U.S. senator, Ted Cruz

Conservatives from both parties have always feared young people and feared and hated everything to do with young people. I remember spending too much time fighting with right-wing asshole Joe Lieberman when he started attacking one of the artists on my label, Ice-T. But it's usually Republicans who are the culprits. Now, they seem to believe that Beto can't be a senator from Texas because he was in a popular El Paso emo band, Foss, that started when he was in high school. One of his bandmates, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, became famous as the lead single for Mars Volta and At The Drive-In. Beto will be even more famous when Texans send him to the U.S. Senate. Here he is, more recently, playing with Texas music icon, Willy Nelson. Anything you want to say about that, Ted Cruz?

And it's not like Beto is the first politician-- or even first member of Congress-- to have been in a band. Probably the only nice thing that anyone can say about Dana Rohrabacher (R-Moscow) is that he was too. And when I asked someone in Palm Springs, some years ago, why they elected a goof ball like Republican Sonny Bono to the House, he said it was because everyone hoped Cher would show up in town sometimes. She didn't.



A few years ago, Blue America backed John Hall for Congress in upstate New York-- and he won. The fact that he had been a member of the band Orleans didn't play much of a part in the race but, if anything, it helped him with name recognition running against an entrenched Republican incumbent. People still love his song, "Still the One," which music-hating conservative Joe Lieberman tried appropriating as a campaign song, forcing Hall to serve him with a cease and desist order. It's still being payed on the radio today-- over 4 decades later. It had a positive impact on people's lives, more than you can say for most politicians.



I'm pretty sure Orrin Hatch was in a band too. He's definitely a serious songwriter. Here he was (below) at a recording session for one of his hit songs, "Eight Days of Hanukkah." It looks like he's trying to be the producer. Maybe he was. He definitely was eager to show everyone he was wearing a mezuzah, at least for the session.



Not my cup of tea but I'll give equal time to another well-known senator who served with Hatch, John Kerry whose 1960 high school band, The Electras has songs all over YouTube. Kerry was the bass player. Give it up or "Guitar Boogie Shuffle":



Back to Utah for a minute-- former governor (and serial presidential hopeful) Jon Huntsman dropped out of high school in the 1970s to join a Salt Lake City band called Wizard. He sported a mullet and played keyboards while they did covers of REO Speedwagon and Led Zeppelin.

In 1978, Senate majority whip Robert Byrd released an album called Mountain Fiddler with covers of folksy West Virginia standards like "Rye Whiskey" and "Cripple Creek." Like Beto and Kara, he was proud of his musical roots regardless of what assholes like Ted Cruz have to say. Here he was on TV-- fiddlin' and singing while he was already Senate Majority Whip. Audience loved it too!



Republican senators Connie Mack (FL), Larry Craig (ID, later caught trying to blow an undercover policeman in a public toilet), John Ashcroft (MO), Jim Jeffords (VT) and Trent Lott (MS) were in a barber-shop quartet, more of a Republican thing than a rock band. They released an album, Let Freedom Sing in 1998. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) is always trying to jam with anyone and he was in a band called Capitol Offense, a band that mostly covered Boston songs, until Tom Scholz had him served with a cease and desist order for fucking up "More Than a Feeling" so badly. A video of them playing "Mustang Sally" can still be found on YouTube. Unfortunately, neither Mack Rice nor Wilson Pickett ever made them stop performing it.



Florida congressman-- now MSNBC host-- Joe Scarborough fronts-- to this day-- an eponymous nine-piece band, Scarborough, mostly performing covers of Prince and Eagles tunes.

I can't remember, but did the Texas GOP complain when Kinky Friedman ran for governor of their state? He sucked up 13% of the vote too. Others elected to office include Jon Fishman (Phish) who was elected a selectman (like city council member) in Lincolnville, Maine; Martha Reeves-- from Martha and the Vandellas-- who was elected to serve a term on the Detroit City Council; and Jerry Butler, the longest-serving Board Commissioner for Cook County, Illinois.




And still threatening to run for something or other every now and then are three somewhat crazy Republican crackpots, Ted Nugent, Kanye West and Kid Rock. Look, in the course of writing this, I was listening to a lot of songs and when I heard this song just below I literally could.not.keep.myself. from jumping up and dancing my ass off as if I was back at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater waiting to give Maxine Brown a kiss backstage.



One last thing-- this tweet by Dayna Steele, east Texas congressional candidate, absolutely owning the Republican Party of Texas:

UPDATE: Kara

Kara Eastman's Communications Director got me this statement, which is worth reading: "The Congressional Leadership Fund was quick to villanize Kara's membership in her college's performance art band, Pieces of Fuck. In high school, she was in a singing group called the All Americans (but you don't see the CLF talking about that band name). We find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do - join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart-- and music."

If you like music and free expression, you can contribute to Kara's campaign here.

Business To Customers: “You Work For Us Now.”

You bought it. Now scan it, bag it and get out of here… 

By Gene Sculatti

Oops... wrong demo

If you’ve been to the supermarket lately, you’ve probably seen-- and maybe used-- the self-serve check-out counters that have sprouted, conveniently, right next to the express lanes. Here helpful clerks give shoppers tutorials on how to place their purchases on the counter, scan them, pay for them, get change and their receipt back, then pack what they’ve bought into paper or plastic.
 
This do-it-yourself transaction is presented, as they all usually are, as a customer-friendly option, an innovation that the management of Megalomart came up with to save you time. But, of course, it’s a corporation-friendly gambit devised to save the chain labor costs. That helpful clerk giving instructions is helping management eliminate her job. (In California, where I live, the installation of a limited number of self-serve check-outs in various stores was part of the last union-supermarket contract agreement.) 

It wasn’t until recently, though, while listening to an almost 50-year-old radio aircheck, that I got some sense of how long this trend has been going on. In a 1961 newscast, sandwiched between Top-40 hits by Ray Charles and the Shirelles, the announcer read an item about President Kennedy planning a special commission to look into the effects of automation on the American worker. Back then the fear wasn’t that jobs from foundry-worker to art director to telephone operator would be carted off to Mexico or India, but that robotic arms and fingers would displace blue-collar cats just starting to make their way into the American Dream. (Catch them welding and bolting away in that clip of Martha & the Vandellas singing “Nowhere to Run” on the line at Ford’s Rouge plant.)


 
But that’s exactly it. As my friend, writer Jim Trombetta, put it, “The customer has become the robot.” Over the years, we’ve been conned into not just paying for our goods and services, but increasingly performing the work that the maker or seller of the goods formerly took on. Maybe in a year or so, we can be lured into unloading the trucks at the supermarket (after fully signing away our rights to sue if we get hernias) for a significant reduction in our grocery tabs.
 
This is the way, in the late ’60s, that self-serve gas was introduced: Forego full-serve, pump your own and you’ll pay less. Granted, as customers, we all naturally respond to the price reduction and/or time-saving of ATM’s, no-host airport check-ins, automated parking lots and customer-service hot-lines (don’t get me started), but in time all the benefits of doing it yourself have a way of mysteriously evaporating. There are no more full-serve gas pumps, the cost has continued to climb, and just how many extra milliseconds do you get from not forking over cash to the underpaid parking attendant?  

Not surprisingly, it seems, younger customers are the most willing participants in the self-serve check-out scam. Clearly, they’re already more comfortable with fully or partially computerized transactions than older folks are. They may also be more gullible, comprising the target audience, and presumably the most responsive cohort, of business’ latest off-loading of labor: corporations’ online invites for customers to “write your own ad.” Here the copywriter, like the supermarket clerk, gets his or her hours pruned back, this time by an American Idol style come-on that promises not price breaks or convenience but cash and (maybe even the more powerful draw) celebrity. It’s still You, Robot. 

The late great monologist Lord Buckley nailed it, back in the early ’50s, in a bit titled “The Supermarket.” That particular American intuition was a fairly fresh notion then, and with characteristic wit Buckley contrasted the bold new world of Safeway with what it had replaced: the corner grocer, who took the shopping list you handed him, then fetched the cans and packs and boxes from his walls, rang them up and bagged them for you. 

Now, says Buckley, 

You grab the cart and you go strolling up and down the aisles 
and you load up all your jazz 
and you're working for them, see?

But it's alright, because you're getting - 
this is the beginning and you’re happy with the 
very, very, low, low, low, low prices. 
Saving, you see. So you don't mind, you know, pushing a little bit.

And then a few years swing by and there you are:
Same supermarket, same cart, but the prices - Whoaa!
And you’re still pushin’ the mother [fucking] cart…
 
Keep on pushin.’

Gene Sculatti hosts Atomic Cocktail, Wednesdays and Saturdays.