The Monkees And Other Pre-Fab Groups

Last month a couple of figures associated with the Monkees died. Paul Mazurski who would later become a highly respected film-maker got his start as a director and co-creator for the Monkees TV show. Songwriter Gerry Goffin, who co-wrote with Carole King such hits as "The Locomation" for Little Eva and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, also wrote songs for the Monkees including "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Star Collector" and "Porpoise Song". Singer Davy Jones died last year.

THE MONKEES ~ "SHE";


These deaths bring into focus what great music they made (the TV show is good fun too) for those who may have forgotten. Or who never wanted to admit how much they secretly liked them. In the counter-culture 1960's The Monkees were as uncool as any boyband today. Even less actually since in today's post-irony culture you can defend liking damn near anything.

Except Nickleback of course. Personally I'm not sure exactly why Nickleback are so roundly despised. I've always found them to be merely annoying but they really seem to have found whatever the opposite of charisma might be. But I digress.

THE MONKEES ~ "WHAT AM I DOING HANGING ROUND";


The knock against the Monkees was of course that they were the Pre-Fab Four. A group put together specifically by Don Kirshner for a TV show designed to rip-off the success of the Beatles movies. That is of course true. Kirshner carefully auditioned the potential band members based not on musical abilities but on their looks, charm and personality in front of the camera. Worse they also hired songwriters, producers and musicians to do the actual music. All the pre-fab four had to do was show up and sing what was put in front of them and lip-synch for the camera. They were not real musicians. They did not pay their dues.

THE MONKEES SCREEN TESTS (NOT ALL CLIPS HAVE SOUND;


The first part is true, they did have extensive auditions. Among those who were turned down were Stephen Stills (too short, stocky and dour) and reportedly Charles Manson (too...well you can guess). However it was not true that none of those who made the final cut were not "real musicians". Mike Nesmith had been getting a local reputation as a singer/songwriter working in a country/rock vein similar to that of the equally struggling Gram Parsons. Peter Tork had been scuffling through the folk-rock scene and could play virtually any stringed or keyed instrument. The other two members had more showbiz resumes but did have some musical backgrounds as well. Mickey Dolenz had been a child actor in a TV show called "Circus Boy" but he had also sang in a folk duo with his sister and played drums in an obscure and unrecorded garage band. Davy Jones was a fairly well known child star from England where he had appeared as the Artful Dodger in the musical of Oliver Twist and had also had a couple of pop records that reached the mid level of the charts. He even had his own fanclub.

THE MONKEES ~ "MARY MARY";


It's also not entirely true that they did not play on their records. It is a fact that their first two albums were largely played by session men. However Nesmith in particular was insistent that he be allowed to contribute some songs and have some input into the recordings. The other Monkees backed him and after the first season they were so popular that they could force a showdown with Kirshner. The studio was at first dismissive and threatened to fire Nesmith who threatened to quit. Then the other Monkees threatened to quit as well and the studio backed down and instead Kirshner was out. From that point on the musical decisions were theirs. For their third full album the boys became a full band, playing on every track. Having proven their point, for the subsequent albums they made full use of the resources and budgets their success granted them in hiring the best session musicians, producers and composers. They still maintained control however and various tracks might be written by a Monkee or pitched by various songwriters and have any combination of Monkee and session guys playing on it. They are still clearly Monkees records though rather than marketing jingles.

THE MONKEES ~ "STEPPING STONE";


In the beginning the Monkees were basically a vocal group with a producer in charge, this would make them in the same position as one of Phil Spector's groups, or some of the Motown groups, and nobody quibbles with the value of those records. By the third album they were clearly in charge. Songs like "Mary Mary", "For Pete's Sake", "All The King's Men", and "Sweet Young Thing" were written by band members. And it would be band members themselves who made some truly groundbreaking creative decisions such as one of the earliest uses of a Moog on a rock record with "Star Collector" and "Daily Nightly" (that was Mickey's idea) or Peter's use of a harpsichord on "All Of Your Toys" and "The Girl That I Knew Somewhere". Mike Nesmith's country rock fusion is contemporary with or in some cases pre-dates the more celebrated Gram Parsons, Byrds and Buffalo Springfield breakthroughs. He also wrote "Different Drum" for Linda Ronstadt's original band The Stone Ponys. His song "Mary Mary would be covered by The Paul Butterfield Blues band. The band just never got the credit for what they actually achieved.

THE MONKEES ~ "STAR COLLECTOR";


For those who still complain that they merely sang while others pulled the strings I would further point out that

a) That's not entirely true, definitely not after the first season

b) the same could be said of Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline, neither of whom wrote any songs, produced their own records or could really play an instrument very well. They were singers period. And yet nobody would listen to one of their records and say; "Big deal, they didn't write that". Ditto for the Supremes, Gladys Knight, Righteous Bros, Wanda Jackson, and George Jones not to mention most jazz singers.

c) Take a look at the list of people the Monkees had access to. You would have to be an idiot not to make use of them. They included;

Musicians;
Guitarists James Burton, Glen Campbell, Al Casey, Doug Dillard, Danny Kortchmar, Clarence White and even Neil Young. Drummers Hal Blaine and Buddy Miles and saxman Plas Johnson.

Songwriters;
Lieber & Stoller, Carole King & Jerry Goffin, Boyce & Hart, Neil Diamond, Niel Sedaka, Carol Bayer, Paul Williams and Andy Kim

Producers and Arrangers;
Jeff Barry, Jack Nitzsche and Shorty Rogers

THE MONKEES ~ "LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE";

If you are still going to be a hard-ass about the "purity" of a "real band" who come up together "in the clubs" or went to school together consider some of these other bands who were "created" by a manager or producer and try and pretend you don't like, or even love some of their work;

1. The Piltdown Men;
The Four Preps were an ultra-white pop vocal group of the mid-fifties who found themselves swept aside by rock & roll. While other similar groups like the Four Freshmen, Four Lads The Crewcuts or The Lettermen broke up or ended up on the oldies circuit, head Prep Ed Cobb decided to embrace the Rock. Enlisting prep pianist Lincoln Mayorga they surprisingly decided to completely abandon their smooth pop sounds and even drop the vocals completely in favour of pounding drums and blaring saxophones for a 1960 Bo Diddlyish Frat-Rock instrumental they called "Brontosaurus Stomp". They boosted the lumbering image by calling the group of studio players The Pitdown Men after the infamous caveman hoax of the 1900's. Besides Mayorga on piano and Cobb on guitar the original band included two sax players, Scott Gordon and Jackie Kelso, bassist Tommy Tedesco and drummer Alan Brenmanen. After the surprise hit of "Brontosaurus Stomp" Cobb assembled other studio musicians for various caveman themed followups such as "Old MacDonald's Cave" and "Goodnight Mrs Flintstone" until the novelty wore off. Then Cobb tried to latch on to the surf craze with "Night Surfin" in 1962 before the Piltdown Men returned to the primordial pit from whence they came. Ed Cobb would later resurface as a songwriter and producer of bands like The Standells (for whom he wrote "Dirty Water"), Chocolate Watchband (see below) and Gloria Jones for whom he wrote "Tainted Love".

THE PILTDOWN MEN ~ "BRONTOSAURUS STOMP";


2. The Dave Clark Five;
Dave Clark was an ambitious aspiring actor, session drummer and record producer with little to his credit in the early sixties. However he was smart and observant so when he saw the success of the Liverpool scene of the Beatles he quickly assembled a group of solid musicians including soulful singer Mike Smith with himself on drums, naming the band after himself, just to make it clear who was in charge. Clark acted as manger and producer and ran the band like a business taking a hefty percentage for himself and paying generous salaries to the band. They churned out several hit singles and even more albums which often seemed to simply reissue their hit singles in various combinations and similar looking covers with perfunctory cover songs and instrumentals. They were despised by British critics as mercenaries who cashed in on Mersey Beat but became huge in north America until the late sixties when tastes changed to more complex and socially conscious. At that point The DC5 hit the road for extended tours of Asia, Australia and Latin America until Clark decided times had changed and he quietly pulled the plug. Clark took his fortune and invested wisely in real estate and going into film and television production, walking away from music completely except for a dreadful rock opera he produced on Broadway. He would steadfastly refuse any reunion talks, being really too rich to care.

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE ~ "BITS AND PIECES";


3. The Tornados;
Britain's second greatest guitar instrumental group (after The Shadows) were assembled by legendary producer Joe Meek originally as a vehicle for bassist Heinz Burt, a platinum blonde blue-eyed pretty boy that Meek had a crush on. It happened that Meek had also been working on a strange song which would utilize the innovative "spacey" effects he had developed for a unique sci-fi sound. The resulting record was called "Telstar" which became a huge international hit. After a few followups Meek split Heinz off to a solo career as a singer while the rest of the band became Billy Fury's backup band. Meek would reassemble a different lineup for various attempts at followup singles until 1967. One of these latter-day Tornados would become drummer for Cliff Richard. Heinz never clicked as a solo singer in spite of his teen idol looks and plenty of press and Beatlemania sent both him, Billy Fury and the new version of the Tornados to the oldies circuit. Joe Meek killed himself in 1967.

THE TORNADOS ~ "TELSTAR";


4. The Marketts & The Routers;
The band that did the classic "Out Of Limits" (also done by The Ventures) and "Batman" (originally done by Neal Hefti) was not an actual band at all. Producer Joe Saraceneo assembled various studio musicians to record a surf song he had written called "Surfer's Stomp" in 1961 and dubbed them The Mar-Ketts. The single was successful enough to record followups for a few years recording several singles, which featured different lineups some of which included drummer Hal Blaine and Leon Russell on keyboards. For some reason Saraceneo actually had yet another instrumental group at the same time using most of the same musicians called The Routers. Under this name they recorded another instrumental hit with "Let's Go". Neither of these bands would play live. To further confuse things Saraceneo would later go on to produce the Ventures who would cover most if not all of his earlier hits.

THE MARKETTS ~ "OUT OF LIMITS";


5. The Byrds ~ The Byrds were of course a real band as everyone knows. However for some reason record producer Terry Melcher had so little confidence in them that they reused to let the band actually play on their first single "Mr Tambourine Man" (and it's B Side) instead bringing in a session group consisting of some of the same musicians from the Marketts and Routers including Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (bass), Jerry Cole (guitar), and Leon Russell (electric piano). Roger McQuinn was the only Byrd to actually play on the single since his trademark twelve string guitar was integral to the Byrd's sound. It's also possible that David Crosby may have strummed a rhythm guitar. The Byrds did however provide all the vocals. All this in spite of the fact that most of the Byrds members (except drummer Micheal Clarke) were veterans of the folk scene, with bassist Chris Hillman having recorded a bluegrass album with his group The Hillmen. By the time of the second single however the real Bryds were doing all the playing from that point on.

THE BYRDS ~ "I'll FEEL A WHOLE LOT BETTER";


6. The Strangeloves;
If Ed Cobb had taken on a cartoonish identity and concept for a fake band then The Strangeloves took it to the next logical step and fleshed it out with a whole elaborate backstory. They were the creation of a New York based songwriting and production team of Richard Gotteher, Jerry Goldstein and Rob Feldman (AKA FGG Productions), who had previously worked with the Girl Group The Angels on their 1963 hit "My Boyfriend's Back". With Girl Groups going out of fashion in the wake of Beatlemania they decided to dispense with managing a group and simply made one up. The Strangeloves were supposedly from far off Australia and were naturally three brothers named Giles, Miles and Niles Strange who were raised on a remote sheep farm where the had developed a new species of sheep while forming a band in their spare time and recording crude garage singles like "I Want Candy", "Night Time", and "Cara-Lyn". The public mostly yawned at the whole fake identity idea but the singles were undeniably catchy and became hits in 1964-65 later covered by Bow Wow Wow, The Count Bishops, Fleshtones, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bauhaus and David Bowie. The singles were successful enough to justify taking a version of the band on the road which it turned out the three Strange Bros, having only been studio players did not enjoy. So they simply hired various session musicians and sent them out on the road as The Strangeloves with nobody noticing. In 1965 they recruited a local Ohio band called Ricky Z & The Raiders led by a young singer guitarist named Rick Derringer to act as the Strangeloves. The Derringer version were so good that FGG brought him into the studio and had him sing over the backing tracks for what was supposed to be the next Strangeloves single, "Hang On Sloopy" giving the band the name The McCoys. "Sloopy" became a hit and the McCoys had followup hits including a version of "Cara-Lyn". Derringer would later go on to a solo career in the seventies. FGG would team up with their old clients The Angels for a one off hit single "Out In The Sun" billed as Beach Nuts. There would be another attempt to create a fake group during the Bubblegum era under the unwieldy moniker The Rock & Roll Double Bubble Trading Card Company Of Philadelphia 19141 which barely made the charts. FGG then roke up for various solo production projects with various members working with The Fleshtones, Blondie, Richard Hell, Robert Gordon, Marshal Crenshaw, Eric Burdon and The Circle Jerks.

THE STRANGELOVES ~ "I WANT CANDY";


7. The Archies;
After his creation The Monkees turned into a Frankenstein's monster Don Kirshner learned his lesson. His next band would not only be hand-made, they would be hand-drawn. After the indignity of being forced out by his no longer docile Monkees Kirshner hit upon the idea of taking the characters from the long running comic who already had a band in the strip and bringing them to life. Sort of. The Archies became an animated Saturday morning TV series with actual songs written and produced by professional pop tunesmith Jeff Barry and played by established and anonymous session musicians fronted by experienced session singer Ron Dante. This formula resulted in the massive hit "Sugar Sugar" which you have to admit is pretty damn catchy. There were even a few followups and a couple of albums. In fact the "band" were so successful that Kirshner decided to push things by putting Dante on stage with a band for a few shows. In another year the novelty had worn off however and the Archies faded fast. "Sugar Sugar" was still classic enough to be the only song covered by both Wilson Picket and The Germs. The Archies' legacy would lead to hits from toon "bands" like Josie & The Pussycats and Pebbles & Bam Bam.

JOE DANTE & THE ARCHIES ~ "SUGAR SUGAR";


8. 1910 Fruitgum Factory, The Ohio Express and The Shadows Of Knight;
At the same time Kirshner was thinking up the Monkees a pair of producers in L.A. were thinking of putting together their own pre-fab group. Jeff Katz and Jerry Kasenetz were managers of a series of garage bands including The Rare Breed who had a hit with "Beg Borrow And Steal" which ripped off the riff from "Louie Louie" and a transplanted Canadian garage band called The Palace Guard who had scored a minor local hit single but were then unable to find a hit in the follow ups which included a cover of a Monkees tune. After this failure K&K (as they called themselves) decided that rather than take the time and effort to groom an actual band they would simply create one once they had a likely hit song. Accordingly the assembled a group of little known session guys to record an Archies sound-alike called "Yummy Yummy Yummy" and dubbed them The 1910 Fruitgum Company. This single was so successful that it would coin the term "Bubblegum" for a genre of absurdly simple and relentlessly upbeat yet admittedly catchy pop singles. Once the Fruitgum Company was played out on the charts K&K simply moved on under a different name, such as The Ohio Express (who are not to be confused with The Ohio Players, a 1970's funk band), using most of the same musicians. At one point they recruited singer from the excellent Chicago blues/garage band The Shadows Of Knight who had just broken up and hired a group of session guys to record a single "Shake" which was released under the group's name. It was successful enough to lead this version of the Shadows to record a full album and tour before giving up the ghost. K&K would score other hits into the K-Tell era of the 1970's under a ever changing set of names.

THE SHADOWS OF KNIGHT ~ "SHAKE";


9. The Chocolate Watchband;
The Watchband were actually a real band who had slugged it out in the San Francisco garage scene with an energetic live show. Unfortunately after getting signed by Uptown Records things get complicated to a Byzantine degree. After recording part of a first album the record company decided to rush the release and got producer Ed Cobb (who had previously sung in the Four Preps and produced The Piltdown Men and The Standells) to add on songs with vocals done by inhouse songwriter and session singer Don Bennett. In spite of the fact that new singer Bennett was black and sounded noticeably different than original white guy singer Dave Aguillar. The album was fleshed out with instrumentals done by an anonymous session band meaning that only four of the album's tracks actually featured the full Watchband. Although now considered a classic of 60's Garage the resulting album "No Way Out" also suffered from lack of promotion and distribution and was not a hit so the already unhappy band then broke up. However at this point the band had a new label, Tower Records who were not ready to give up the ghost and a second album "The Inner Mystique" was released made up of outtakes left over from the first album. This sort of thing was not uncommon (example; The Buffalo Springfield's third album) however Cobb went even further when he decided that there wasn't enough material for a full album and so blithely took several tracks from completely different groups, The Yo-Yoz and The Inmates, who had demoed for the label, and simply added them to the album listing those tracks as Watchband tracks. With eye catching pop-art album covers these albums sold well enough for the band's management to convince a couple members of the band (minus Aguillar) to reform and record a third album. This time the resulting album was actually the reformed group with the addiction of Moby Grape guitarist Jerry Miller who dropped by incognito as he was still under contract to CBS and played lead on the album. This album "One Step Beyond" was not a success and the Watchband broke up for good. This time the label let them stay that way.

THE CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND ~ "DON'T NEED YOUR LOVING";


10. The Electric Prunes;
Another classic 60's garage band, The Electric Prunes were also a real band at first but once signed by Reprise Records they were handed over to songwriters Annette Tucker and Nancy Mantz who wrote two hit singles "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" and "Get Me To The World On Time", both classic 60's nuggets. The resulting first album sold well but the followup did not and the band called it quits in 1967. So far nothing too unusual here. However producer David Axelrod took over and released the third album "Mass In F Major" of early prog-rock under the Electric Prunes name in spite of the fact that few if any of the band members were left and the albums sounded nothing like the Prunes. The bulk of the playing on the album was done by Canadian band The Collectors fleshed out by session men. A fourth album of more prog-rock entitled "Release Of An Oath" followed with various members of The Collectors and yet another band, Climax. These albums were judged to be screamingly pretentious embarrassments by all concerned. Amazingly by 1969 the label was still not ready to give up and reformed the band yet again with a completely new lineup and released a fourth album titled "Good Old Rock And Roll". As title suggested this was an attempt to get away from the failures of the previous two albums (which weren't real Prunes albums either remember) and get back to basics. The album stiffed of course and this time they gave up for good in 1970. The Collectors would later reform as Chilliwack who would score numerous hits in Canada and America later in the 1970's and 80's.

THE ELECTRIC PRUNES ~ "I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT" & "GET ME TO THE WORLD ON TIME";


11. The Velvet Underground;
Obviously the iconic Velvets were a real band, at least for the first four albums. However by the time they had wrapped up the fourth album "Loaded" the band had disintegrated. John Cale had been forced out after the second album and replaced with Doug Yule. Before heading into the studio to record "Loaded" drummer Maureen Tucker was gone after getting pregnant. By the end of the session Lou Reed had given up in frustration and quit. Manager Steve Sesnick was not willing to give up quite so easily and reformed the band around the pliable Doug Yule, his drummer brother Billy and guitarist Sterling Morrison to tour the album. Morrison soon quit as well but the Velvets still went into the studio with zero original members and released a third album, "Squeeze" which sank like a stone and that was that.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & THE PLASTIC EXPLODING INEVITABLE;


THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO ~ "SYMPHONY OF SOUND";


12. Fleetwood Mac;
No group has ever had a more traumatic and confusing life than Fleetwood Mac. The original late sixties version was led by Peter Green and was a respected blues/rock band in Britain. The band was fleshed out with rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie (after whom the band was named) and singer/guitarist Jeremy Spencer, later a third guitarist Danny Kirwin was added. After four solid albums and some classic singles things got strange. First band leader Peter Green gobbled handfulls of acid while on tour and began hallucinating that he was a biblical prophet. He began growing his hair and beard long and wearing flowing robes and a large crucifix and vowing t o donate the band's profits to charity. He soon left. Singer Jeremy Spencer the band's other front man, then stepped in and a fifth album was recorded. He was unhappy with the pressure of being band leader though and had a nervous breakdown after a minor earthquake while on tour in California. He subsequently fled the band and joined a religious cult where he still remains today. That left the band's third guitarist Danny Kirwin and a new recruits keyboardist Christine McVie and American singer/guitarist Bob Welch. Kirwin turned out to be just as fragile as Green and Spencer and he had a nervous breakdown while backstage and refused to go on, banging his head against the wall until it bled. He was quickly fired. When the band then decided to take some time off from their grueling tour schedule which had already cost them three members which led to a battle with their manager who insisted they get back on the road. In the flurry of lawsuits that followed manager Clifford Davis actually managed to convince Danny Kirwin back and formed a group which he sent back on the road under the name Fleetwood Mac which he claimed he owned in spite of the fact that not only were there no original members left but the band was actually named after Fleetwood and McVie. This did not last too long though and the band was able to free themselves from their manger's clutches and regain their name. Further lineup changes would lead to the mega-star 1970's version. Sadly Kirwin would end up institutionalized.

FLEETWOOD MAC ~ "BLACK MAGIC WOMAN";


12. Boney M;
Disco was full of producers who put out records using anonymous session guys under assumed names. Since disco did not require live concerts there was no need to put a face to the records. German producer Frank Farian decided to go one better and create an actual band that could tour and promote his latest song "Do You Wanna Bump". Accordingly he recruited a trio of female backup singers and lead singer Bobby Farrell (all from the West Indies) and was probably surprised when his creation scored a series of hits in Europe and sold a jawdropping fifty million albums. That's more than the Beatles, at least at the time. They were not as successful in America but still scored a number of hits including one of the iconic hits of the disco era with the silly but addictive "Rasputin". Like Kirshner he would later see his puppets take on a life of their own as they decided (wrongly) that they could score hits without their puppet master. By the mid 1980's there were more lawsuits than hits as no less than three different Boney M's were on tour. Farian would later decide that he would need a band who clearly had no talent at all and would therefore not get ideas above their station. And that's when he came up with Milli Vanilli but let's not dwell on that.

BONEY M ~ "RASPUTIN";


13. The Village People;
After carefully watching Frank Florian's adventures French disco producer Jacques Morali decided he to bypass Europe with an expressly American version to promote his vision of populist gay disco songs like "Macho Man". Accordingly he recruited a group of mostly gay (except for the lead singer Victor Willis) club dancers and dressed them up as various gay archetypes naming them after the gay area, The Village. "Macho Man" was a massive hit as was it's followups "YMCA", "Go West" and "In The Navy". The latter so much so that the U.S. Navy actually used it in recruitment ads. Amazingly the public at large (not to mention the Navy) had completely missed all the gay subtexts, although they really weren't all that subtle. Eventually people caught on and there was an outraged backlash from Conservative America that stalled their career. Making a hugely expensive and terrible movie was the last straw and the group collapsed after lead singer Victor Willis quit after revealing that he was the only band member who was actually singing in their live shows while the rest got to lip-synch.

14. The Sex Pistols;
Everybody knows by now that Malcom McLaren put this band together. Even if he wildly exaggerates his contribution, and he most certainly did, there's no denying the original vision was his. The original version was a legendarily bad trio called "The Strand" and then "The Swankers" with Steve Jones on vocals & bass, Paul Cook on drums and Wally Nightingale on guitar. Then McLaren signed on as manager. He was a wildly ambitious aspiring impresario who had briefly managed the New York Dolls (with notable lack of success) along with a clothing store modestly called "Sex" where The Swankers hanged out. McLaren fired the bespectacled Nighingale for being too ugly, moved the hoarse, husky voiced Jones to guitar, brought in Glen Matlock on bass and changed the name to The Sex Pistols. Now to find a singer. He started with music critic Nick Kent, who had the look and charisma but also had a serious drug habit and soon quit before even playing a gig. Then he recruited ambitious Scottish singer Mudge Ure who quickly decided he didn't like taking orders from McLaren and departed, later to join Ultravox. Then at his wit's end McLaren stumbled on to Johnny Lydon hanging out as his shop and the rest was infamy. McLaren soon lost control of Lydon and the band through his head-games, ego, greed, short attention span and indecisiveness and he would have no particular impact on the band's music or stage show but he did contribute much to the band's look as well as the distinctive DaDa graphic art of their record covers and posters.

THE SEX PISTOLS ~ "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN";


15. The Runaways;
Kim Fowley was the Los Angeles version of Malcom McLaren, a would-be Svengali who was at the same time too clever and too stupid for his own good. McLaren, being educated and English, had all sorts of art and politics pretensions while Fowley was only interested in two things (besides money); sex and rock n' roll. Accordingly he decided he what he needed was a band of hot young girls playing glam rock. Which he quickly got once he stumbled on to first Joan Jett and Sandy West then Lita Ford, Miki Steele and then Cherie Currie who he molded into The Runaways. Bassist Steele was soon fired for being a couple of years older than the rest of the band, she later joined The Bangles. Once again the results are well known. And again, like McLaren, Fowley's contribution is controversial. He claims a much larger role in the look and sound of the band than they do. The "Runaways" movie has Fowley writing their first hit "Cherry Bomb" on the spur of the moment while Joan Jett claims that she wrote it with early songwriting partner Kari Krome. Cherie Currie's book agrees with Jett and the song is indeed credited to Jett and Krome. From what has been seen of Joan Jett and Lita Ford both in the band and solo it seems that their musical tastes were pretty much set before Fowley got ahold of them, ditto for Jett and Currie's basic glam-punk look. At any rate like McLaren Fowley's manipulative and controlling nature, egotism and greed would break up the band. Jett would go on to bigger solo hits as would Ford to a lesser extent. As for Fowley; he was never able to find a follow up and was reduced to cashing in with albums of outtakes and demos.

THE RUNAWAYS ~ "CHERRY BOMB";


16. Siouxsie & The Banshees;
Siouxsie and her then boyfriend Steve Severin were part of the Bromley Contingent; a group of flashy London punk scenesters that included Billy Idol, Tony James (future Gen X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik) and Steve Strange (future Visage singer) in Punk's 1976 summer of hate. Inevitably she decided she wanted to graduate to the stage herself and so cobbled together a band that included Severin on bass, another scenester, Sid Vicious on drums and Marco Pironi on guitar. Marco was the only actual one in the band with any actual musical experience, however limited, so after a few weeks of desultory practices they scored a gig and went on stage with a fifteen minute jam on "The Lord's Prayer" (a hit version if which had actually made the charts sung by Sister Janet Mead, an actual nun) which tossed in fragments of various other songs that they knew parts of. By all accounts they were dreadful but Siouxsie had obvious charisma so when she approached Malcom McLaren's assistant Nils Stevenson to manage the band. Stevenson set about assembling a band around Siouxsie. Severin was kept on bass but Marco was out as looking too old and chunky for the Banshees (he later joined Adam Ant's band after McLaren poached the Ants to put together Bow Wow Wow) while Sid Vicious quit to form his own band but ended up in the Sex Pistols. After going through a few drummers and guitarists (plus a violinist in an ill-advised Velvet Underground phase) they ended up with John McKay on guitar and Kenny Morris on drums. The new Banshees recorded two successful albums and several singles before McKay and Morris stormed out in a dispute with Siouxsie and Stevenson in 1978. They were eventually replaced by Slits drummer Budgie and former Magazine guitarist John McGeogh for three more classic albums until Stevenson quit for obscure reasons in 1982 with McGeogh being abruptly fired shortly afterwards after collapsing with exhaustion. The Banshees soldiered on for a few more albums but it just wasn't the same.

SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES ~ "HONG KONG GARDEN";


17. Bow Wow Wow;
Malcom McLaren found himself with nothing to do after the Sex Pistols imploded. He tried to put a band together behind Chrisy Hynde; an American who had come to England looking to become a singer and was then working at Malcolm store. But she proved resistant to his tacky and exploitative ideas of marketing her as some sort of bondage hooker and went off to form her own band with the Pretenders. So when Adam Ant paid him a thousand pounds to become his manager Malcolm was game. Ant had been scuffing around for a couple years with his Ants, who included former Banshees guitarist Marco Pironi, playing a ramshackle fusion of glam/punk/surf and spaghetti-western music. Malcolm helped bring focus to the Ants visually and as a concept. But then Malcolm couldn't leave well enough alone and decided what the Ants needed was some jailbait. So he poached away the Ants rhythm section and built a new band around a young fifteen year old Burmese singer Annabella Lwin (real name Lu Win) who, unlike Chrisy Hynde, was too young and naive to have any strong views of her own. Bow Wow Wow would take the glam/surf/spaghetti-western sound of the Ants and added a spurious African tribal beat and a whole lot of energy for a unique sound. Malcolm added an image based on promoting a tribal image with jailbait sex and cheap thrills, including lyrics with obvious double entendres and album art featuring nudity in artwork taken from Manet. The media ate it up and the group had some moderate success after a hit cover version of The Strangeloves "I Want Candy" but their fire was somewhat stolen by Adam Ant of all people who (along with Marco) reformed a new Ants and ended up having more hits. As with the Pistols, Malcolm couldn't leave well enough alone and encouraged much strife in the band. At one point hiring a new singer, a flamboyant scenester calling himself Boy George to play off against Annabella. The band quickly decided enough was enough and fired Malcolm and George. Bow Wow Wow recorded one more solid album then broke up. Annabella went on to a low key solo career while Boy George went on to a notably high profile one. Without Malcolm though. McLaren gave up management and recorded a couple of surprisingly successful solo singles himself.

BOW WOW WOW ~ "I WANT CANDY";


18. Tubeway Army;
Gary Webb was an ambitious would be singer/guitarist in the 1970's London punk scene with a serious fixation on Bowie and the John Foxx era Ultravox who desperately wanted to have a band of his own. Problem was that besides the fact that he couldn't keep one together he also hated performing live. No matter; after some false starts he managed to put together a band with bassist Paul Gardiner changing his own name to Gary Numan, drafting in his uncle to play drums and dubbed it The Tubeway Army. They recorded a demo that was good enough to get signed by Beggar's Banquet Records. The resulting album was credited to Tubeway Army which got some good reviews but did not exactly set the charts on fire due partly to Numan's reluctance to tour. By the time he went back into the studio the band as such no longer existed and Tubeway Army was simply a collection of session musicians which included Ultravox keyboard and fiddle player Billy Currie. Numan was by now focused on synths anyway and later dropped the Tubeway Army name altogether and went under his solo name where he would score a massive techo-pop hit with the classic "Cars". Paul Gardiner would occasionally work with Numan again until his death in 1984.

GARY NUMAN ~ "CARS"


19. The Germs;
The Germs weren't formed by a manager but they were still a group assembled and pre-packaged before they had even learned how to play an instrument. In this case the Svengali was singer Darby Crash, who had worked out a whole name, image and marketing strategy while still in high-school. His plan was to form and band, name it and come up with stage names for the members, design a logo and posters, promote the band, find a few instruments, book a gig, THEN learn a few songs, then record an album. After recruiting school chum he dubbed Pat Smear on guitar, Crash decided on a female rhythm section. That ran into a few problems when one of the new recruits, one Belinda Carlisle, decided she'd rather sing, and be in a less scuzzy band, like the Go-Go's. Then drummer Donna Rhia was deemed to inept for even the Germs and was replaced, after a couple of shambolic gigs, with Don Boles. After that things pretty much went as planned with The Germs building a cult audience were signed by Slash Records and appeared in "The Decline Of Western Civilization". They also got banned from playing pretty much everywhere and an unsatisfied Crash kept tinkering with the band's look and line-up. Eventually in December 1981 they did one last gig and Crash went home and overdosed. This was apparently part of Crash's plan as well; to go out as a cult hero and cement his reputation as a rebel without a clue. Unfortunately he chose to kill himself one day before John Lennon was shot and did not get the press attention he was hoping for. In 2007 a Germs biopic named "What We Do Is Secret" was released with actor Shane West playing Crash. The Movie led to a reunion tour with the original Germs and West filling in on vocals to surprisingly good reviews.

THE GERMS ~ "LEXICON DEVIL";


20. The Plasmatics;
The Plasmatics were formed by manager Rod Swenson to capitalize on charismatic scenester Wendy O. Williams as the singer of an ultra-violent, Clockwork Orange version of Bow Wow Wow. If Malcom McLaren gave his pervy jailbait imagery some artsy pretensions and political slogans, then Swenson went straight for the camp gutter with a topless Wendy covered in shaving cream, sawing guitars with a chainsaw, taking a sledgehammer to TV sets and once blowing up a car onstage while guitarist Richie Stotts cavorted around in a tutu, studs and a mohawk. Stotts was a well known scenester recruited to give the band some street cred while the rest of the band were jobbers dressed up in punk gear, while bassist Jen Beauvoir had a serious R&B background having played with Gary US Bonds and Doo-Wop group The Flamingos since his teens. Some punk journalists considered them a bad joke but they were so over-the-top that most punks didn't really mind. They recorded a few albums and got piles of press but did not exactly set the charts on fire until they broke up. Williams went solo by recording a collaboration with Motorhead on a version of "Stand By Your Man" that caused Motorhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clark to quit. After that she did an album of generic metal that sank without a trace. Eventually she retired and became an animal rights activist. Sadly she killed herself in 1998. Mohawked black bassist Jean Beauvoir would record a couple of unsuccessful solo albums as well.

THE PLASMATICS ~


21. The Bluebells;
A mid-1980's Scottish band from the era of acoustic Celtic groups like Aztec Camera, The Waterboys, The Alarm and The Hothouse Flowers; The Bluebells were the brainchild of Robert Hodgens, a writer for a music magazine who had held a contest for band demos the winner of which would win possible record deal. Hodgens submitted a demo under the name of Bobby Bluebell and was perhaps a little surprised to win. He had to quickly form an actual band to take advantage of the opportunity. The Bluebells would score a few hits in Britain using differing lineups for the rest of the decade.

THE BLUEBELLS ~ "CATH";


21. Sigue Sigue Sputnik;
By 1986 most post-punk bands, no matter how cynically conceived, would at least pretend to have some sort of political or artsy ideology. Not Sigue Sigue Sputnik, they openly and loudly advertised that they were a pre-packaged marketing tool who cared nothing for their fans or music. It was as if someone had taken all the smug boasting of Macolm McLaren, Kim Fowley, Rod Swenson, Darby Crash and Gene Simmons and said; "These guys are just too subtle". They were the brainchild of Tony James who as former bassist for Generation X had plenty of time to watch how not only McLaren and Nils Stevenson had operated but also how Gen X singer Billy Idol had left the ashes of Gen X to have a massive solo career. Accordingly James set out to create a band that would grab media attention by sheer brash salesmanship and a carefully thought out updating of the basic Adam & The Ants urban pirate-punk look for the Road Warrior/Blade Runner age. Unlike most post punk bands he would not even pay lip service to punk's political ideals, the only thing that mattered was money, attention and sex. Even the music was an after-thought. In fact the band he assembled had for the most part little musical experience (although guitarist Neal X had played with Johnny Thunders) and were recruited solely for their looks; two were the spitting image of Billy Idol while singer Martin Degville (recruited while dancing at some poncey club) looked like a combination of Boy George, The Mighty Wez from "Road Warrior" Alex from "A Clockwork Orange" and a Muppet Peacock. James himself would switch from bass to guitar since bass wasn't rock star looking enough. Like the Germs they did not even play any gigs nor did they have any songs, they simply gave out press releases in which James and Degville said various outrageous things and had endless photoshoots. Record companies who had previously passed on the likes of The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie, Adam & The Ants, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Culture Club and The Jesus And Mary Chain as being too over-the-top only to see them score hits were oddly susceptible to this blatant manipulation as was the British media. Accordingly Sigue Sigue Sputnik were signed by EMI for a large advance in spite of the fact that they had never actually played a single gig, nor did they have any real songs. Taking their advance Tony James promptly set to work hiring famed producer Georgio Morroder who took the fragmentary songs added a drum machine and drenched them in sound affects and echo and presto; a debut album. James then topped it of by selling advertising in the record grooves. Then they made a few videos of the band frolicking around London. At that point James remembered that they would have to at least go through the motions of being a band and playing live so a perfunctory tour was done. While all this scored volumes of media attention the singles actual chart action was mediocre and the followup was worse. While the singles did alright in dance clubs the music was just too jarring and noisy for the mainstream while the underground despised them. For the followup album James brought in Rick Astley's producers for a more radio friendly pop sound which sank like a stone and that was that.

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK ~ "21th CENTURY BOY";


22. Skid Row;
Sebastian Bach had been kicking around the Toronto glam metal scene for a couple of years singing in a band called Kid Wikkid. Everyone agreed he had star quality. He had a powerful voice, pretty-boy looks and a larger than life stage presence. In the aftermath of the massive success Guns N' Roses his manager whisked him off to Los Angeles where Atlantic Records assembled a band of local wannabes and called it Skid Row. Their first album was a hit and so was a followup but then came Nirvana and that killed off the Glam Metal scene with shocking speed. All of a sudden gritty authenticity was in vogue and Skid Row became particularly uncool. The band was dropped and Bach was fired after the usual "musical differences". They eventually broke up with various members disappearing into the void from whence they came while Bach returned home to Toronto where he would eventually play the lead role in the stage version of Phantom Of The Opera.

SKID ROW ~ "I REMEMBER YOU";

Draft Dodgers And Chickenhawks

Given the recent howls from the Conservative outrage machine over the release of Bowe Bergdahl and the cries for his trial and possible execution for "treason, desertion and cowardice". not to mention the strident demands for a re-invasion of Irag. Or Syria. Or the Ukraine. Or Gaza. Or Libya. Or Nigeria. Or...Oh Fuck it; whoever is in the news today. It is worth once again recalling the phenomena of the Chickenhawk.

Chickenhawk; (noun) A person who publicly and stridently calls for war while consistently avoiding serving in one himself. See also; "Neo-Conservative".

Question; "Why did the Chickenhawk cross the road?"
Answer; "To avoid going to Vietnam".

Like Dick Chaney say; who took five deferments to avoid Vietnam. Or George Bush jr and Dan Quayle whose wealthy and connected fathers pulled strings to ensure they would stay stateside in the National Guard where they would be safe and close to home. After which Bush jr then got a further exception to go help a friend of his father (then a Texas congressman) campaign for election, which Bush jr then skipped out on to go on a drinking binge. Or former Texas Congressman Phil Gramm who claimed he wanted to serve but was kept out of the US Army because there were just too darn many minorities to make room for him (seriously?). Pat Buchanan, George Will, Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Bill O'Reily, Rush Limbaugh, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeldt, all of whom were and remain loud supporters of the Vietnam War and all of whom managed to avoid going anywhere near the place themselves. Most shameless of all was Mitt Romney who actually led student demonstrations not only in favour of the war (a war that his father, Michigan Republican Governor George Romney later expressed public reservations about) but also in favour of the draft itself. There are even photos of him carrying a pro-war sign. Following that he took a special religious deferment available to Mormons that allowed him to spend the war as a missionary in France, where he no doubt spent many tense moments dodging flying croissants and escargot. In fact virtually every other top Republican bigwig who was old enough to serve in Vietman managed to be elsewhere but that has not stopped them from swaggering about like General Patton ever since, attacking Democrats as cowards and traitors, including those who actually served in Vietnam such as John Kerry, Bob Kerry, John Murtha, Max Cleland, Wesley Clark, Chuck Hagel, Al Gore (who was a non-combatant writing for "Stars & Stripes" but still spent time in-country) and Oliver Stone.

Then there's the king of the chicken hawks; Ted Nugent. Rock n' Roll's loudest and proudest chickenhawk. Nobody, not even Rush Limbaugh, has been more loudly bellicose in his calls for war of any kind and his worship of macho guns n' guts American Exceptionalism, and his equally loud contempt for the effeminate and effete liberal traitors who oppose any war. Oh; and the entire nation of Canada. His General Patton act would be a tad more convincing if it weren't for his own admission of how he dodged the Vietnam draft by literally shitting his pants.

In interviews, Nugent has provided varying accounts of how he avoided an all expenses trip to Vietnam. In a 1977 High Times interview, he claimed to have stopped bathing a month before his draft physical, adding that he showed up for the exam with pants “crusted” with urine and feces. “I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop,” Nugent proudly recalled. The avidly anti-drug Nugent also claimed that he did a line of crystal meth beforehand because; “I wanted to see the look on the Sergeant’s face.” In his High Times interview, Nugent recalled his glee at evading the chance to defend his country (though he mixed up the 1-Y and 4-F deferments which are for health reasons). “And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F,” he said. “They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass.” Previously the anti-elitist, anti-intellectual Ted had previously also taken a college deferment, but he forgot to mention that part.

Actually it wasn't so much an admission as it was "Ain't I the Motor City Madman" bragging back in the 1980's when he still had a viable career as a rebel rocker. Now he's a has-been and the only way he gets any press at all is as a braying Republican shill. So after some enterprising reporter found his now embarrassing old quote he eventually backtracked and claimed that he made the whole thing up. He just doesn't know why he didn't get called up to serve gosh darn it, cuz he really really wanted to go to Nam. So according to Ted he's no cowardly hypocrite, he's a shameless liar. Because that's much more inspiring. Of course even if you buy that he spent years lying about his draft dodging Ted still could have volunteered to fight with the guns he so loves though, and he clearly did not.

Ted is not Rock n' Roll's only chickenhawk however. There's Strangler's bassist J.J. Burnel. Even during the original punk wave he was known for his public adoration of good old-fashioned macho warlike stuff like martial arts (in which he claims to be a black belt) and guns. He's also been known to praise the idea of a military draft, reckoning that a stretch in the army will make a man of you. This sort of macho bragging made The Stranglers plenty of enemies in Punk's 1977 summer of hate. So it was a tad embarrassing when English punk journalists Julie Burchell and Tony Parsons reported that he was dodging the draft himself. Burnel was originally from France where they still had the draft when he turned of age. Seeing his duty Burnel wasted no time, he claimed a deferment citing health reasons, then he skipped off England to be a rock star.

THE STRANGLERS ~ "NO MORE HEROES";


Then there's New Country singer Lee Greenwood, best known for his "Proud To Be An American" which is required listening for any Republican convention, especially the part where he praises the troops and states that he would be proud to "Stand Up, Next to you" and defend Old Glory. Ah yes; that line never fails to bring a tear to the eye of Tea Partiers everywhere. Kind of makes you wonder what Lee Greenwood was doing during the Vietman war. Serving in Khe Sahn? Da Nang? Saigon? Not exactly. He took a hardship deferment and then was a little busy protecting America from Communism by bravely serving in Las Vegas as a blackjack dealer and part time musician. That'll learn 'em.

There are a few other celebrated Rock N' Roll draft dodgers, although they can't be called Chickenhawks since unlike Ted, Lee and J.J. they opposed the war they were being sent off to, they didn't support it and expect others to fight it for them, nor did they call others cowards for not going. A few others didn't actually dodge the draft but ended up with seriously abortive military careers due to their being complete fuckups.

Lester Young ~ The great Jazz saxman of the 1940's and 50's was drafted into the army during World War Two, although he really shouldn't have been since he was clearly not Army material. Already a fairly well known musician, an alcoholic pot smoker in poor health, he should have have been rejected from the start and Army doctors were inclined to do so. He could have easily been sent out to perform for the troops and do war bond and Red Cross drives as other musicians, actors and athletes were, and as Young was quite willing to do. However the Army stubbornly decided to make an example to other Bohemian types, especially black ones, and inducted him anyway. While still stateside he received numerous warnings for sleeping in and slacking off, got poor marks for his physical condition, twisted his ankle on an obstacle course and was eventually caught with pot and barbiturates and court martialed. At his trial the previous recommendations from doctors to turn him away became something of an embarrassment and the presiding judges admitted that he "would not make a suitable soldier". However he was found guilty and sent to the stockade anyway. Fortunately the commandant there allowed him to form a band and perform at Army functions for the rest of the war, which is basically what he should have been doing from the start.

LESTER YOUNG & WILLIE THE LION SMITH ~ "MEAN TO ME";


Fred Lacy ~ A lesser known jazz guitarist who was drafted in the Army around the time Young was, Lacy soon got himself in trouble too and wound up in the stockade as well. In fact he was surprised to find himself in the same jail as the great saxman Young and would join his combo. After the war he would continue to play with Young's band. Another occasional member of Young's wartime combo was Canadian born pianist Gil Evans who was however not a prisoner but was assigned to a nearby army hospital. Evans would later go on to greater fame as arranger for Miles Davis' classic late fifties albums. Yet another non-prisoner member was drummer Fred Below who would become the ace session drummer on numerous blues records recorded by Chess Records in the 1950's.

Willie Dixon ~ The great blues songwriter was a young bassist and former Golden Gloves boxer when World Wat Two broke out and he refused the draft as a conscientious objector. He did not oppose the war on religious grounds but racial and political, namely he saw to reason to fight for a government that denied blacks basic civil rights, allowed segregation and refused the right to vote in many states. He served a year in jail then moved to Chicago where he became the main songwriter, producer and session bassist for Chess and Cobra Records on hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and many more.

WILLIE DIXON W/MUDDY WATERS, SONNYBOY WILLIAMSON, BIG JOE WILLIAMS, VICTORIA SPIVEY, OTIS SPANN & MEMPHIS SLIM;


Magic Sam ~ The great Chicago bluesman, Sam (real name; Sam Maghett) was already making a name for himself first backing his harmonica playing uncle Shakey Jake Harris and then with a series of classic recordings for Cobra Records when he was drafted into the Army in 1959. He was not the most successful of soldiers, impulsively going AWOL and quickly getting caught and sent to jail for a couple years. Upon his release he went back to Chicago to rebuild his career. This took some time as Cobra Records had been shut down and rock and roll had taken center stage. He played backup to Otis Rush until he was picked up by Delmark Records for whom he made some groundbreaking records that showed much promise but before he could finally make the big time he died of a sudden heart attack in 1969 at the age of 32.

MAGIC SAM ~ "ALL YOU LOVE";


Frankie Lymon ~ The teenage Do-Wop singer's career had already hit the skids due to bad management decisions, a drug habit, multiple and simultaneous marriages and his being a chronic fuckup when he was drafted in 1965. Not surprisingly it didn't last. While serving on a base in Georgia he did stay off drugs but he also he married yet another woman and went AWOL to play some gigs. He was caught and dishonorably discharged in 1967. He then moved to New York to resume his career but died of a heroin overdose in 1968.

FRANKIE LYMON & THE TEENAGERS ~ "LITTLE BITTY PRETTY ONE";


Roy Brown ~ The great Jump Blues singer was 4f in World War Two due to flat feet.

Arlo Guthrie ~ The son of singer Woody Guthrie, Arlo did not actually intend to dodge the draft, it just worked out that way. He would later explain the story in hilarious detail in his classic song "Alice's Restaurant" and still later in a successful movie. Prior to his being drafted Arlo had gotten himself busted for the heinous crime of littering and the United States Army suddenly decided that he was a potential trouble maker and sent him home as unfit for duty. Actually his name may have been a factor, even though Woody had served loyally in the Merchant Marine during World War Two, he had also become well known as a left wing activist and Arlo himself had openly opposed the war so the Army may have looking for an excuse to be rid of him. It's not like the pale, short, scrawny Arlo had great military potential anyway.

ARLO GUTHRIE ~ "COMING INTO LOS ANGELES";


Iggy Pop ~ Iggy's escape story is outlined in his autobiography; after showing up at the induction center, Iggy was told to undress for his physical. Whereupon he stripped naked and began masturbating and running around with a hard-on, hyper-ventilating and sweating. After being subdued by MP's he explained that he was gay and couldn't control himself around all these big strong men. The annoyed Army doctors swiftly sent him home and that was that.

IGGY AND THE STOOGE ~ "TV EYE" & "1970";


Scott Asheton ~ The Stooges drummer was too bad-ass to use Iggy's fake gay routine. Instead he showed up at the induction center in his van full of crushed beer cans, drunk and strung out on acid and speed, having not slept or bathed for days, dirty and with a lightning bolt painted on his face. The wild eyed incoherent Stooge asked where the guns and napalm were before being sent to the stockade to dry out. Apparently this took some time. Eventually the Army gave up trying to make any sense out of him and discharged him.

The Allman Brothers ~ When older brother Duane was called up he tried to pull the same gay act that Iggy had gotten away with, showing up in makeup and pink panties and acting effeminate. Unfortunately the Sergent was wise to this sort of thing, or he just didn't go far enough (unlike Iggy) because they did not buy it and signed him up. At this point Duane switched to plan B and simply refused to take the oath or sign the induction papers. Apparently nobody had tried this before so the Sergent was caught by surprise and angrily sent him home vowing that the nervous Duane would be arrested as a draft dodger and sent to Leavenworth. By the time younger brother Greg was called up Duane still hadn't been arrested but the brothers had switched to plan C; shooting himself in the foot. Accordingly the brothers prepared for Greg's big day by getting roaring drunk, then they discovered that they didn't have a gun. So they had to stagger off to the seedy area of downtown and buy a Saturday Night Special. Now they ran into another problem; who would do the actual shooting? Duane went first but he was so drunk that he couldn't find the target and instead stumbled around waving the pistol randomly until the slightly less drunk Greg disarmed him and finally managed to shoot himself in the foot, after first carefully drawing a target on his sneaker, which turned out to be the wrong foot. The doctor spotted the target but did not turn the brothers in. Later the Brothers discovered that the whole routine was not really necessary since they could have easily applied for a hardship deferment as being the sole supporters of their sickly widowed mother.

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS ~ "WHIPPING POST";


Terry Dene ~ Little remembered today; Dene was one of the early rock stars in Britain, having built up a reputation as Britain's Gene Vincent. A leather clad, motorcycle riding, brawling wild one who married a movie starlet named Edna Savage, he had a short string of hits like "Pretty Little Pearly" and "A White Sport Jacket" and scored miles of tabloid coverage in the late 1950's as Englands wildest rocker. Compared to the well behaved likes of Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan and Billy Fury, Dene was an out of control speed freak, both with his motorcycle and the amphetamines he gobbled back. Behind the scenes however he was fragile and troubled, drinking heavily, and with a failing marriage when he was drafted into the British Army in 1958, being called up on the very same day Elvis Presley reported for duty. At first Dene was unsure what to do. Dene was inclined to go, not least because he wondered if Army discipline might not straighten out his mess of a personal life. But his managers were afraid that the time off might kill his career momentum. At the very least they would miss out on their commission off of his sold out live gigs. Their attempts to keep Dene out of the army ran into a bit of a hitch when Dene went off on another drunken bender and got himself arrested. Dene was let off on the drunk and disorderly charges on the condition that he report for duty, which he duly did. Followed by the inevitable swarm of paparazzi. Once in the barracks Dene had a complete nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, eventually being fully discharged nine weeks later. Now clean and sober and ready to resume his career but the public reaction was swift and merciless; he was attacked in the press as a coward and even in Parliament. He was booed off stage in Blackpool and divorced by Savage. Dene returned to drinking and wandering the streets alone. Washed up at age twenty one. In 1964 he became a born again christian and started a new life as a preacher working with drug addicts. He would occasionally perform religious songs in public but he would make no attempt to resume his musical career, denouncing his past life as a "false idol and false person". In the past decade however he has made some appearances on the oldies circuit.

TERRY DENE ~ "THE GOLDEN AGE";


Richard Carpenter ~ The pianist and arranger for The Carpenters avoided the Vietnam draft by taking a student deferment.

Paul Revere ~ Keyboardist and bandleader for Paul Revere and the Raiders. Forming a band originally called the Downbeats then The Raiders and had already had their firts midsized hit by 1961 when he was drafted into the US Army. He claimed conscientious objector status and spent a year and a half as a cook (he had previously owned his own fast food restaurant) at a mental institution before resuming his career to have a slew of later hits.

PAUL REVERE & THE RAIDERS ~ "KICKS";


Bob Mosley ~ Bassist for classic San Francisco psyche band Moby Grape; a band led by Skip Spense who turned out to be a schizophrenic and left the band after a violent psychotic break and was institutionalized. Mosley was not much healthier in fact and eventually quit to join the U.S. Army, perhaps hoping army discipline would keep him balanced. It didn't and a violent brawl led to his discharge after being diagnosed as a schizophrenic as well. Mosley ended up homeless and living at the side of a highway when his bandmates found him and invited him back into the band for a reunion in 1996. He has recorded sporadically since while Spence has not.

MOBY GRAPE ~ "OMAHA" & "8:05";


Nervous Norvus ~ Singer of the gory 1950's rockabilly number "Transfusion" in which the singer narrates a tale of his numerous blood transfusions required by his endless car wrecks. He followed it up with some equally odd (if less gory) singles. Nervous came by his name due to his stage fright and overall jittery nature. When drafted during World War Two he didn't want to go but as it turned out his asthma and overall poor health made him 4F anyway.

NERVOUS NORVOUS ~ "TRANSFUSION";


Rick James ~ Just as Mick Jagger and Eric Burdon sought to emulate black blues singers, James,(born James Johnson from Buffalo, NY) aspired to be the black Mick Jagger and after dodging the draft by skipping across the border and settling in Toronto he formed a band called The Myna Birds with the unlikely partnership of Neil Young and bassist Bruce Palmer which created a buzz that was heard all the way down to the offices of Motown Records in Detroit. Motown signed them up and proceeded to record an album. Unfortunately James had not bothered to tell anyone he was a draft dodger and he was arrested while in the studio and dragged off to a stint in the brig. An angry Motown pulled the album (which has never been released), the manager skipped off with the band's $25,000 advance and then overdosed and the band broke up. Young and Palmer would move to Los Angeles and form The Buffalo Springfield while James would take years rebuilding his career. He worked for a while as a session guy for Ray Charles before being fired by Charles' manager for sharing drugs with him, then he went Europe with a blues band. Later in the 1970's he would rebrand himself as the "Superfreak" funk master.

Bruce Springsteen ~ Bruce was fresh out of high-school and hoping to make a go with his band Castiles when he was faced with the prospect of being drafted. He chose to take a student deferment and go to college even though he was a poor student. His choice was made clearer when his drummer proudly volunteered and went off to Vietnam and was killed within weeks. Springsteen's school career was short lived but as it turned out when he was called up he failed his physical due to having suffered a concussion from a motorcycle accident the previous year.

Johnny Paycheck ~ The future "Outlaw Country" singer really was an outlaw. Born Donald Eugene Lytle, he was playing professional gigs in rough honky-tonks throughout the Southwest by the time he was in his teens. Only five and a half feet tall the diminutive young singer was sensitive about his size and changed his name from the unfortunate "Lytle" to "Donny Young" and became a hellraising drinker and brawler, ready to throw down at the slightest provocation. In 1955 he impulsively joined the Navy to see the world but went AWOL when he got bored and spent time in the brig when he got caught. Seeking revenge Young went after a superior officer and and beat him senseless. That got him a court martial and an eighteen year prison sentence which he tried to escape from by somehow sawing through the ceiling of the shower room. Again he was caught. Thereafter he apparently behaved himself long enough to get his sentence reduced to two years. After his release he made his way to Nashville where he worked as a backup singer and session guy with the likes of Faron Young, Ray Price and George Jones as well as recording some obscure singles. Eventually he changed his name again to Johnny Paycheck (after an obscure boxer who was beaten by Joe Louis) and started to score some hits of his own in 1965. He would go on to a checkered career marked by frequent arrests for drunkenness, brawling, a house-breaking and at least one bar-room shooting as well as at two bankruptcies before scoring his biggest hit with "Take This Job And Shove It".

JOHNNY PAYCHECK ~ "A-11";


Harry Choates ~ A fiddling playing singer, Choates became the first Cajun crossover artist by taking traditional Cajun music and adding influences from Honky-Tonk and Western Swing, recording in English and French. His version of "Jole Blon" became a massive hit in 1946. Before that he had been a raging drunk from his early teens and was so irresponsible that for most of his career he did not even own a fiddle of his own. He simply "borrowed" them and often did not bother to return them. Drafted in World War two, the paunchy, pasty alcoholic Choates was clearly not Army material and he was quickly released for civilian service in a shipyard for the duration of the war. After his discharge he continued his career and his drinking and carousing until he was arrested in 1951 for drunkenness as well as abandoning his wife and children and was tossed into jail. He was found in a coma when his manager showed up with bail money. The official cause was cirrhosis of the liver caused by drinking as well as epilepsy, however there remained a strong suspicion that he was beaten to death by persons unknown.

HARRY CHOATES ~ "JOLE BLON";


Gene Vincent ~ Before he became the very prototype of the leather clad rebel rocker; Eugene Vincent Craddock briefly served on a naval base in Virginia, as his father had before him. His career as a shipbuilder came to a quick end when he suffered serious injuries in a traffic accident n 1955. In later years he would insist that he had been injured in a motorcycle crash, and that has been the usual story ever since. However there is an alternate story that the hard drinking Vincent was staggering back to barracks drunk after lights-out when he stumbled into the path of an speeding jeep. The nature of his injuries, which were a break to his leg at the shin bone which was so deep that it was almost severed, suggest the latter story is more plausible. Vincent, who adored Hank Williams, spent his long hospital recuperation practicing his guitar and dabbling at song-writing. Unfortunately he also developed an addiction to pain-killers which along with his drinking would stay with him for the rest of his life later exacerbated but the amphetamines common to most country and rockabilly singers of the era. He would score some classic hits and become a huge influence through his extended tours of Britain, Europe and Japan. His addictions would catch up to him when he died broke and alone of ulcers and other complications in 1971.

GENE VINCENT ~ "BABY BLUE";


Don Joyce ~ Singer with Sound Collage band Negativland. Originally Negativeland didn't have a singer at all and built songs by using sound collages. Joyce was a host radio show Over the Edge on the Berkeley, California, radio station KPFA who was also a convicted draft dodger during Vietnam, although he served no time. He joined the band to contribute snidely mocking vocals that often parodied popular songs including U2 on their cover of "I'm Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

NEGATIVLAND ~ "I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR";


Arnold Schoenberg ~ The father of avant garde composers was drafted into the Austrian army during World War One in spite of the fact that he was already 42 years old, out of shape, asthmatic, nearsighted and with no military training. He was also already a well known composer, notorious amongst the deeply conservative Habsburg establishment for his experiments in atonal music. Given that Schoenberg was also a converted Jew in the deeply reactionary Hapsburg empire he could hardly expect a good reception in the Austrian army. Arnold's own rather prickly personality didn't help. He was greeted by one officer with the words; "You wouldn't have to be that notorious Arnold Schoenberg would you?" To which he replied; "Well yes; I did have to be since nobody else was willing to". Still, he was well educated and so was sent off to officer training in 1916 but was eventually discharged on health grounds. A year later he was actually drafted again, this time to serve in a military band which at least does make some sense, but was quickly discharged again for the same health reasons. Once Hitler came to power he would fled the country and move to America.



Edgar Allen Poe ~ As a youth Poe clashed with his adoptive family and looking to escape from gambling debts he enlisted in the U.S. army under an assumed name. He later attended West Point under his own name but was quickly court martialed due to his refusal to attend formations, classes or church. Upon his release he would concentrate on his writing. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Revolution Will Not Be Twitterized

The recent decision by the US Patent Office that the Washington Redskins football team will lose their trademark protection (on the grounds that the term "Redskins" is inherently insulting to an entire group of people and therefore can not be trademark protected) is a notable victory for Native Americans who have long protested the derogatory name. Amongst all the media speculation about the significances of the decision one question nobody seems the slightest bit interested in asking is; "What does Suey Park think about this?". It would seem her fifteen minutes are truly up.

Suey Park, you may recall, was the "Twitter Activist" responsible for the "#CancelColbert" twitstorm a few months back in which she called for Stephen Colbert to be fired after a joke he had made in response to Redskins owner Dan Snyder's attempts to defuse (or distract) criticism by starting a foundation to combat racism against Natives. Colbert then announced that he would therefore be starting his own bullshit anti-racist foundation stating; "I am willing to show the Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." This was the punchline of a joke that made sense in the context of the show and his character of a right-wing TV blowhard and with a lengthy set-up. However when afterwards a Comedy Centre staffer sent out a tweet using only the punchline with no context Suey Park seized on this to claim the joke was racist and therefore sent out tweets demanding that Colbert be "cancelled". These tweets were eventually retweeted (more on this later) and promoted in the mainstream media to the extent that it became an actual news story for a few days (it was over a weekend) and Colbert was roused to a typically witty and insightful response.

COLBERT RESPONDS TO PARK;


You don't have to have followed the news slavishly to have noticed that Colbert was not in fact cancelled. Unlike other TV hosts who have found themselves the target of actual boycotts, as opposed to twitstorms (looking in your directions Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck), Colbert didn't even lose any sponsors. Coincidentally soon thereafter he was however awarded the much coveted position of David Letterman's successor hosting the Late Show. The surely had nothing to do with the twitstorm but CBS obviously saw no need to delay it either, let alone reconsider. It would seem that "Hashtag Activism" has it's limits.

COLBERT GETS LETTERMAN'S JOB, RIGHTWINGERS THROW TANTRUM;


So who is the leader of this brave new world of the Twitter "Revolution"? Suey Park is a California based 23 year old self-described "activist, writer and comedian"; although nobody in the comedy world seems to have heard of her before and if she has any comedy skills they have not exactly on display. At any rate Park had previously gotten success, of a sort, in her previous attack on January 14 of "Liberal Racists" at CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" who had done a sketch satirizing Kung Fu movies. This campaign had gotten coverage by CNN, Time Magazine and Cosmopolitan and an apology from the show's co-creator.

ANOTHER RIGHTWING TANTRUM;


Park was known, to the extent that she was known at all, by her Twitter handle "NotYourAsianSidekick" starting in December of 2013 the point of which was to hunt down and point out examples of Asian racism on television and the movies. While Park has been the public face of the campaign it was in fact a co-operative organized by Park and feminist writer Juliet Shen, Eunsong Kim, a PHD candidate in literature and a few other supporters including Wall Street Journal writer Jeff Yang along and an Asian organization called "18 Million Rising" . Other previous targets included attacks on Saturday Night Live which attracted little attention until "How I Met You Mother" blinked. Showing an all-to-revealing pattern of attention seeking false modesty Park managed to take sole credit while pretending to thank the nameless little people posting;
"The viral success of #NotYourAsianSidekick after I first tweeted the tag on December 15, 2013, wasn't about me, but all of us." By February, Shen and 18 Million Rising had fallen out with Park (Shen now describes her as a "former friend") and Yang who wrote an article daring to question the validity of the entire hashtag revolution and was immediately denounced as a sexist by Park. By that point she was more or less a solo act, although she still has the support of Kim. She also has 23,000 Twitter followers and a listing on The Guardian's "Top 30 Young People In Digital Media". The Guardian article did not deign to mention Shen or the others.

NOT READY FOR MY CLOSE UP;

Still despite the media attention she had gotten to that point, and her obvious desire to grab the spotlight did not guarantee she would actually shine when it came. Exhibit A became the embarrassing interview she did with Salon's Prachi Gupta in May. Salon had been quick to give the whole #CancelColbert campaign coverage, and not hostile coverage either, so when they decided to do a full interview she was no doubt pleased and should have been prepared. The results were a P.R. disaster showing the self-appointed leader of the "Revolution" and spokesperson of all Asian-Americans, especially "Asian-Feminists" to be a walking, talking maze of identity politics, talking points left over from the 1990's, along with being a laughably self-absorbed, utterly humorless, smug prig with a wholly deluded sense of her own power and importance.

Right from the start it did not go well;
Did you watch the Monday night segment on the “Colbert Report”? No, and I think that’s an irrelevant question.
Why do you think that’s an irrelevant question?
Because you’re still trying to understand my context, rather than the reaction and the conversation that I was trying to create.
You don’t think understanding your context is just as important?
I don’t think so.
Why is that?
I think it was just an opportunity to use hyperbole in a way to make social commentary, which is what the [unintelligible] would want to do to begin with. So in that sense, it’s not about understanding context, it’s never about understanding nuance and complexity of a white man’s joke, when a woman of color is always read as literal, when to me it was never a literal hashtag. And so it’s all this like, “What can we do to get you to understand context,” like, “What did you know, what did you not know,” like, “You don’t understand satire, you didn’t see the show,” etc. … When the question is really, what is so complex about understanding someone who is both a writer and an activist, understanding how I use satire and hyperbole to make a political commentary."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So there. Fuck context. The only thing that matters is the reaction you get from manufactured outrage? No wonder she belongs on Twitter. Any more than 140 characters might, you know, explain stuff and allow for nuance and we wouldn't want that to get in the way of sneering self-righteous resentment. She has more in common with Fox News than she would care to admit. Notice also how she adds in that "it was never literal" proviso. She (and Kim) have done this in another article for the New York Times where she said that she didn't really want the show to be literally cancelled so she's not a censor happy racial Anthony Comstock after all, never mind that in the same interview she asserts that she was indeed totally serious about cancelling Colbert. Since Park is clearly not a complete idiot I assume she doesn't really think she can get TV shows cancelled that she doesn't like, although you can't really be sure with her. But it's worth noting that part of her defense is basically to say "Can't you take a joke?". Which of course is exactly the defense she denies to Colbert. Why? Because he's a white guy of course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"In that case, do you think that “The Colbert Report” itself is oppressive or just that specific joke or comment was oppressive?
Neither.
Neither?
I’m talking about whiteness at large."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So the whole publicity stunt was just an excuse to attack whitey? And thereby bring about the "revolution"? Park thinks that's never been done before? Let me introduce you to "The Tawana Bradley fake rape case" and the "O.J. Simpson was framed by the police" case. At least they ended racism with those so it was totally worth it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I think as a result of the white ally industrial complex, for too long people of color have been asked to censor whiteness, they have been asked to educate their oppressor, they have been asked to use the right tone, and appease their politics in order to be heard.
….when are we actually going to have these conversations about how white supremacy has caused Orientalism, slavery and genocide? When will we actually touch on those big things? And I don’t think that we’ve seen that yet in comedy, and I do think it’s possible, but no one is ready to flip the switch to make the white person the subject of the archetype."
I always paint my white characters to be singular, to be ignorant, to reverse the gaze onto them instead when they are our subjects, instead of always constantly saying people of color are fucked and a way to kind of always reinforce our subject’s location in reference to white men as some metaphor.I think it would be a more realistic socially commentary if I were able to joke about the totality of white supremacy, but I don’t think that’s going to happen on national television."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Right. Because Richard Pryor, Dave Chapell, Eddie Murphy, The Wayans Bros, Spike Lee, Dick Gregory, Arsenio Hall, Wanda Sykes, Russell Peters and for that matter Margaret Cho were just a bunch of sell outs. I mean did Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor even have Twitter accounts? What a bunch of small timers. But wait it gets worse;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What is the best way to work with white people, to get them on our side?
I don’t want them on our side.
You don’t want them on your side.
This is not reform, this is revolution."




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well yes; we all saw that scene in Spike Lee's "Malcom X" where he tells that white liberal college girl "We don't want your help". Too bad she didn't watch the rest of the movie where he changes his mind and decides that working together to fight racism is kind of a good idea. But then watching the whole movie might conjure up context which we know is counter-productive. Not to mention counter-revolutionary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"So what do you want to see happen in your revolution?
I mean, it’s already happening I think. The revolution will not be an apocalypse, it’s gonna be a series of shifts in consciousness that result in actions that come about, and I think that like, at this point is really like, ride or die, in terms who’s in and who is out. I don’t play by appeasement politics, it is not about getting my oppressors to humanize me. And in that sense I reject the respectability politics, I reject being tone-policed, I think we need to do away with this idea that these structures are … that the prisons can undergo reform and somehow do less violence as a structure. But any example like that.
Wait, can you ask that question again, I got distracted real quick, there was a bird outside my window."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She added; "SQUIRREL!!"


Seriously, what the fuck was that? You would think she would have had a more coherent answer to the question of what her whole "revolution" was about before launching it. Or any answer really. You get the impression she just ran out of verbiage and bailed out after calling out "Look behind you!". Actually what she reminds me of most is Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin's doomed battle to the death with her own talking points. This sort of thing always happens when you only associate with people who agree with you.

TINA FEY DOES SARAH PALIN;


Some of Parks' supporters have cried fowl at this "ambush" and not editing out that last comical "Look a birdy" part. But I assume that Gupta promised Park a verbatim non-edited interview and that's what she got. Besides it doesn't change the fact that Park's answer up to that point was still a pile of empty gibberish and politically correct talking points in a hopeless search of a coherent answer. And don't even try the "she just needs some media training" line. First of all that's the usual fallback for right wing assholes who blurt out ignorant things about blacks, women, Muslims and gays. Secondly Suey Park is a well educated and articulate person who bills herself as a "writer and comedian", and who has been actively courting the media spot light for months so she has no excuse for coming off this narcissistic, smug and shallow. Except that she obviously is.

ANOTHER INTERVIEW GOES BADLY (YES I KNOW THE HOST IS BEING A SNOT, BUT SO IS SHE):


Note one of her more annoying traits, also learned from Identity Politics; the tendency to use the most convoluted rhetoric to avoid answering questions. Example; "I don't want to do the labour of answering this" When what she really means is "I shouldn't have my opinions challenged, especially by white guys". The use of excessive verbosity as a weapon to overwhelm questioners and confuse the audience and is always an effective trick to suggest that you are smarter than everyone else, and therefore obviously right and thus shut down the very possibility of debate. See Conrad Black.

Another thing that happens to activists (regardless of ideology) is a thoroughly obnoxious need to compare themselves to the earlier generation of real activists and revolutionaries who actually went out and sacrificed, in some cases everything, for the cause. To wit;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I was asking you about if you want white people — because they’re still the majority — if you want them to be allies in your goal to end racism?
Well, one, they won’t be the majority for long. And two, I don’t want any ally who is going to use my emotional labor with no guarantee of aiding my liberation. And so I feel like this question that white America asks of us, “Why can’t you be reasonable to get us to work with you?” And I keep saying, being reasonable has never worked in history. All other big racial justice movements, all of the big historical figures in racial justice were never reasonable. They were always painted as crazy during their time, and even afterwards now."

Yes indeed. I understand Mandela did some of his best tweets from prison.

Which brings us to our grand finale;

"Would it be inflammatory to say that you think white men are sort of the enemy? Um. I mean I think they are, and we might as well label it. Whiteness will always be the enemy. It’s not like I want to hurt them, it’s not like I want them to have any pain, but like, I just want them to realize what they have, and to honor the advantages. And I don’t think it’s much to ask to just even acknowledge it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And there we have identity politics in a nutshell. It's us versus them period. It's the perfect ideology for the young (and therefore not used to nuance), educated (therefore fond of dense rhetoric), idealistic (therefore looking for a cause), serious (therefore humorless and judgmental) and disaffected (therefore looking for a group to identify with and others to reject). In fact much Park seems to genuinely believe she's inventing this maze of circular reasoning herself, there is actually not much there I haven't heard from University politics going back to the 1990's when was still called "Political Correctness".

Both Ryerson and the U of T student unions were (and are) hothouses for this sort of endless racialism. In fact the U of T's student union is right now literally planning to restructure it's union reps away from electing them on the basis of the various schools of study (engineering, fine arts, law etc) and instead allocating them on the basis of race and gender. Except for white males of course, they don't count because they are oppressors, or something like that. Mind you they still have to pay the student union dues so there's a lawsuit waiting to happen. The phrase "No taxation without representation" comes to mind. Then there's Ryerson and it's former radio station CKLN (where I once worked) which was shut down by the CRTC after it was torn apart by (among other things) nasty and endless identity politics infighting. It was common at staff meetings to have various people introduce themselves by saying "I'm so-and-so and I'm a black lesbian" or whatever, even if that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. It was also not unusual for white males to be told they were "oppressors". We were even occasionally told that we should not have speaking rights at all since "white males had oppressed society for too long". We should certainly not be on staff. And white people shouldn't be allowed to play black music (like the blues, swing, gospel or ska, all of which I play) since that's "cultural appropriation" even though most, if not all, activists know fuck all about music or musicians. They certainly don't respect them. Suey Park would have fit right in. When Ryerson tried to get the radio license back from the CRTC their proposal included guarantees that not only would employment equity be followed (no argument there, besides it's the law) but no white males would even be allowed on staff or on the air at all. But white male Ryerson students would still be expected to contribute their $10 fee to support the station. Presumably because they owed it for their centuries of oppression. I was at those hearings and the CRTC commissioners were not amused. More surprising was that the Radio Ryerson group seemed truly shocked that anyone would see any problems with this. Once again; When you only talk to people who agree with you, you are in for some nasty surprises when you meet the real world. They didn't get the license BTW.

What has always struck me about identity politics is that in spite of it's strident leftism it is actually deeply conservative. Other modern ideologies such as Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Green-Ecology and even Libertarianism (but not Fascism obviously) seek to break down barriers between and within societies such as race, nationalism, religion, language and gender. Identity Politics instead seeks to strengthen them, and then hunker down behind them. Regardless of whatever failures they may have, the other ideologies are essentially outward looking and optimistic, believing they can change and improve the world by breaking down barriers they regard as arbitrary or false. Identity Politics however is entirely inward and defensive, believing the world is an all encompassing threat to be shut out. Identity Politics is also an overwhelmingly middle class, university educated and suburban movement. It has little or nothing to say about issues of poverty and class other than to blame poverty on racism and to vaguely assume that once race is solved poverty will sort itself out. Rather like how trickle-down economics devotees assume the "magic of the market place" will fix everything once we have enough tax cuts. Identity Politics was fashionable in the 1990's but today it is somewhat archaic in a time where most on the left generally see the major issues as being those of poverty, income disparity, corruption of the political system plus the destruction of the environment. These issues cross all racial and gender lines. Identity is however the perfect ideology for the sheltered, privileged and self-absorbed. Like Suey Park. How much time does the working class spend worrying about an offensive joke or counting how many black, Asian, Hispanic or gay characters on on TV or counting how many lines they get? Very little in my experience. That's a luxury only someone with spare time and a certain amount of income security would have. And only such a person would be so isolated from the real lives of the "47%" to think that these are really the earth shattering issues that Park obviously believes they are. Park and other Identity Politics polemicists are fond of demanding that white males "check their privilege" or "acknowledge their advantages" while at the same time being utterly oblivious to the "privileges" they enjoy due to their solidly middle class or even upper class, university educated status. 23 year old Park actually still lives with her parents. I know Americans are especially reluctant to acknowledge that class even exists let alone deal with class issues but for a self appointed "revolutionary" to be this clueless is inexcusable.

In another one of the interviews she does via webcam she actually had to cut it short because "I hear my mother coming home." Seriously. It's like an SNL sketch about entitled PC "revolutionaries" plotting the overthrow of the state from their parents basement only to be told to take out the trash. I bet that happened to Fidel Castro all the time. You're just about to launch an attack on the regime when you get grounded. "But Ma; We were about to liberate the people! You never let me have any fun"!

Identity Politics does however arm it's adherents with an arsenal of labels that can be used to shut down any criticism or debate simply by invoking them, even against people who are basically in agreement. So when Jeff Yang had the temerity to question Park's campaign, then he was a sexist, because "Asian men [throw] women of color under the bus." If you are an Asian woman critic, like Juliet Shen then you are "a white feminist." If you are a white feminist, that really means "White (Supremacy) Feminism." And if you are a white male, you are the enemy and nothing more needs be said. (an aside; at one typically nasty argument at CKLN I was amazed to hear a black man dismissed as a "white man of colour". It's also worth noting that most of these identity politics types were white and Asian middle class university students, actual young black people thought they were patronizing jerks).

ALLIES AND AXIS

How self-absorbed is Suey Park? Elsewhere (not in the interview) Park has crowed with a presumably straight face that "my tweet" of #NotYourAsianSidekick was "the point of origin for Asian American feminism." Yep; Suey Park invented Asian-American feminism. Just like that. On Twitter no less. Whew; That was easy. Right now the ghosts of Susan B. Anthony, Nellie McClung, The Pankhurst Sisters, Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinham (I know the last two are not actually ghosts but fuck it) and generations of suffragettes are thinking; "Gee; If only we had Twitter".

How self-absorbed? How about rudely pushing aside the longstanding fight of a clearly marginalized group to push her own agenda of controversy farming. You know; the native people who this whole discussion was supposed to be about. Remember them? Suey Park certainly didn't.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Then there's the matter of how #CancelColbert "Drowned out the Native Voice," as Indian Country Today Media Network bluntly stated. Native American journalist Jacqueline Keeler criticized Park for shifting discussion away from the Redskins name, and for not promoting hashtags to protest racist sports team names. Keeler claims, "We kept Suey Park in the loop regarding our hashtag #Not4Sale, she was just not moved to act on it." Native activist Jennie Stockle, who works with Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, wrote: "... like a tornado, Suey Park's tweet calling to cancel Colbert Report came through and pushed all of our efforts into a storm shelter."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Park eventually responded with a single tweet; "The almighty @andrea366 has reminded me of an important point--can't ignore anti-Native racism--let's address issues simultaneously." Which she then proceeded to not address again. It was literally the least she could do. And note that she had to be repeatedly reminded to say even that. I note that in Canada it would have harder for her to get away with this simply because Natives are a much larger and more visible part of society. As a percentage they make up around ten percent of the population, slightly less as a ratio than to blacks in America. Whereas the percentage of Natives in America is less than one percent, and most of that is in rural areas of a few sparsely populated western states. For a urban dwelling, middle-class American university student like Suey Park it would not be a surprise if she has actually met very few native people outside the her sociality class. Natives are simply not part of her identity or experience and therefore she never gave them a second, or even a first thought. Park is fond of saying that the "three pillars of whiteness are slavery, genocide and orientalism". Notice that she leaves out any specific mention of the oppression of Native peoples, without which there would be no America at all. I suppose that she would say that she includes them in her "genocide" pillar but she obviously didn't think they were worth a specific mention whereas "orientalism", which concerns her directly, was. It shouldn't be a contest of who has suffered worse oppression (although identity politics inevitably turns into this) but if I have to chose between who has suffered more, Asians or Natives, I would not hesitate to say Natives.

How self-absorbed? How about nominating herself as the spokesperson of "18 Million" Asian Americans. I assume that Suey Park and Eunsong Kim are both Korean since Park and Kim are common Korean names. The only way they get claim leadership of "18 Million Asians" is if they, and we, assume all Asians are the same. The very assumption that Park would normally denounce as racist. But (and I can't believe I have to point this out) Koreans are not the only Asians in America, nor are they the most numerous or oldest settled group. All Asians do not have the same history either in Asia or America. Nor do they even particularly like each other. Hostilities between Chinese and Japanese, Japanese and Koreans, Chinese and Tibetans, Chinese and Vietnamese, Chinese and Mongols, Chinese and Uighurs, Vietnamese and Cambodians, Japanese and Philippinos, to name the most obvious, are deep and go back for centuries. As for their American experiences; most Koreans started to come to North America in the wake of the Korean War. Issues like the Chinese railroad workers or the head-taxes on Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 1900's are not Korean issues. Nor did they suffer the Japanese internment of World War Two, the atrocities of the American occupation of the Philippines, the annexation of Hawaii or the discrimination and poverty faced by Vietnamese Boat People.

Additionally in another tweet which we'll examine more in a minute, Park also revealed that she was "A Christian". I assume she means Protestant since Catholics usually identify as such but it doesn't really matter. Now I realize there are a fair number of Asian Christians, especially Koreans, however most Asians are Buddists, there are also a fair number of Muslims (mostly from Indonesia, Malyasia and Philippines) and Catholics (From Philippines and Vietnam). Does she really get to speak for them simply because she says so? Does she even understand their viewpoints? Has she even given this a minutes thought? I seriously doubt it.

I'm not Asian but I don't see why Suey Park gets to appropriate other people's historical pain to promote herself and her crusade to purify television of Asian jokes she finds offensive. Especially since Suey Park has no problem siding with one of the more obnoxious racebaiters in the American media. And I realize there is a lot of competition for that title.




CROSSING OVER TO THE DARK SIDE

One might wonder how tweets sent out by a random person who is not otherwise famous for any reason can go viral while the random tweets sent out by regular losers (A.K.A. "The Rest Of Us") pass without the slightest notice. Simple, she had a lot of help.
Cue Michelle Malkin.

Malkin is yet another far right bloviater and a regular on Fox News. Yeah, I know; that doesn't exactly narrow things down. For those who are not regular Fox viewers; besides their lily white show hosts they keep a few non-white regular talking heads whenever they want to play the race card against those Evil Liberals. Malkin is their #AsianSidekick. Besides her regular appearances on Fox she is also published on a white supremacist website. Not surprisingly she is a doctrinaire right wing asshole who regularly attacks immigrants, minimizes torture at Guantanamo, (when she isn't actively praising it), is morbidly anti-gay, especially hateful towards Muslims, and frequently smears women who disagree with her based on their appearance. Her book on Japanese internment (she's in favour natch) was so flawed the Historians' Committee for Fairness denounced it as "a blatant violation of professional standards of objectivity and fairness." She's called Asian campaign donors to Hillary Clinton "limited-English-proficient and smellier than stinky tofu," and once dismissed campaigns against anti-Asian racism as "self-pitying and grievance-mongering." Malkin is so extreme that even some on Fox have called her out, although they keep having her back. Given Fox's core audience of angry white males you can she why they want her but why does Suey Park?

MICHELLE MALKIN IS "SICK & TIRED OF ASIAN GRIEVANCE MONGERS"


Because while Park's 23,000 Twitter followers are fairly impressive, Malkin has 693,000. She also has Twitchy; a right-wing social media site which she funded that collects and promotes chosen posts and reposts them in heavy volume to create "News". Oh; and she has easy access to Fox and Talk Radio to promote the "news" she helped start in the first place. She is therefore well placed to manufacture dissent on twitter.

Park; ostensibly a far left anti-racist activist and Malkin; a nasty far right demagogue were perfectly suited to each other's needs. Malkin (and others in the far right media) had been long looking for issues to pry non-white voters away from the Democratic Party by playing the race card. Thus we have the bizarre, (at least to non-rightwing assholes) spectacle of black commentators like Herman Cain, Alan West, Alan Keyes, Ben Carson and a handful of others hysterically comparing Obama to Hitler and the Democratic Party to the KKK and the S.S. in a notably unsuccessful attempt to win over black voters. Malkin has been particularly aggressive in pushing this agenda.

MICHELLE MALKIN RIGHT-SPLAINS IMMIGRATION TO GERALDO WHO CALLS HER AN EXTREMIST;


In January some lowly staffer at MSNBC posted a fairly idiotic and gratuitous tweet snidely mocking conservatives after some racist idiots complained about that cute Cherrios commercial with the bi-racial family. Malkin and Twitchy pounced sending out a blizzard of tweets blaming "liberal race card crap" and their "evil", "poisonous" and "libelous" racist agenda. For the record; the Cherrios ad did indeed provoke some jawdroppingly racist comments on social media, (which Malkin blithely ignored) but it was unfair and stupid to blame that on conservatives as a whole. After MSNBC quickly apologized, deleted the tweet and fired the staffer stating that the offending tweet had not been authorized, Malkin was typically gracious, refusing to accept the apology and sneering that MSNBC were "cowardly".

Park did not play any role in Malkin's campaign but she was clearly watching because soon thereafter she began retweeting Malkin's posts and when some of her left-wing followers challenged Park's promoting an openly racist/homophobic/Islamaphobic right wing bloviator, Park blandly stated in another tweet that she found Malkin "reasonable". When Park went after Colbert, a liberal hero much hated by the far right only slightly less than Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, Malkin, smelling blood in the water, could hardly contain her glee.

An article written by Arun Gupta entitled "Bitcoin Activism; How Michelle Malkin and Suey Park Found Common Cause In Hashtag Activism" exhaustively chronicled the resulting twitstorm;

"THE STORM
The supercells of Park and Malkin collided the night of Thursday, March 27, 2014, generating a perfect media storm. Park fired off at least three tweets in four minutes. The first was a "Fuck you" Colbert. The second was the infamous "The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation," which was retweeted a respectable 144 times, a mild breeze compared to a Twittersphere hurricane like Justin Bieber, whose feckless grunts are retweeted 100,000 times or more. In the third tweet, Park accused white liberals of being "just as complicit in making Asian Americans into punchlines." Presumably she meant as complicit as conservatives.
In the next two hours, Park rained directives, exhortations, jargon, and rebukes on her followers while skirmishing with others on the side. Park was Asian-America: "there are 19 million of us," "We are waiting for an apology and explanation," and "we aren't amused."
Park commanded, "White people--please keep #CancelColbert trending until there's an apology. This is NOT the burden of people of color. Fix it. Do something," ordered those who aren't "structurally subordinated [to] please shut up and help #CancelColbert," and sneered, "Still waiting for white allies to make themselves useful, but they probably enjoy the show too much." (She changed her opinion about the utility of white people the following week, telling Salon, "I don't want them on our side.")
Park later claimed #CancelColbert was a provocative way to expose liberal racism, but that night she chided, "White people ... I know y'all are used to having structural power, but losing one show isn't oppression #CancelColbert." Additionally, the headline for her and Eunsong Kim's article for Time magazine read, "We Want to #CancelColbert."
An hour into the campaign, at 8:52 p.m., Twitchy swung into action. In February, I felt the heat from a Twitchy-led mob, including a thinly veiled death threat, after sarcastically tweeting that Republicans were guilty of economic terrorism by threatening to cut aid to a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee if workers there unionized. But for #CancelColbert, Twitchy became as earnest as an Occupy Wall Street general assembly, curating Tweets about racist "othering," transphobia, fat shaming, cis privilege, bullying, and triggering. Garnering more than 1,200 mentions on Facebook and Twitter, the Twitchy post praised Park's persistence, framed the issue as one of liberal racism, and noted the campaign was going viral fast.
MALKIN IT FOR ALL IT'S WORTH
At 9:34 p.m. Park announced the first victory. The Colbert Report deleted the original offending tweet that had gone out at 6:02 p.m.: "I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever."
Malkin piled on seven minutes later by tweeting, "Coward just deleted the tweet!" She also referred to the tweet from Twitchy the previous hour. By 9:44 p.m. the tweets were flying furiously. Park tweeted, "I'm sick of liberals hiding behind assumed 'progressiveness' #CancelColbert." Malkin retweeted it instantly, "Co-sign! RT @suey_park I'm sick of liberals hiding behind assumed 'progressiveness' #CancelColbert." Malkin was retweeted 152 times, nosing past the first Cancel Colbert tweet.
Also at 9:44 p.m. Malkin tweeted at Park, "@suey_park I know we don't agree on much, but you are TENACIOUS & I respect that greatly. Hats off to you. #cancelcolbert." Given their contact in January, the tweets suggest the two had been in communication. At minimum the two were now joined in battle against the specter of liberal racism. Park does not comment on Malkin, but she retweeted or favorited all three of her tweets.
Others alerted Park she was making common cause with someone who commits every political sin Park preaches against. At 9:48 p.m. on March 27, only four minutes after Malkin backed Park, noted anti-racist and feminist blogger Mia McKenzie, aka Black Girl Dangerous, expressed her displeasure, tweeting "@suey_park ew michelle malkin, though? ew." Park didn't respond, but she favorited this tweet soon after.
At 9:54 p.m., two hours after #CancelColbert was born, Malkin explained the goal was not to cancel Colbert, it was to "#ExposeColbert & it's working very effectively. Luv the smell of hypocrisy toast." Park favorited the tweet.
Cancel Colbert rapidly went stratospheric. At 10:33 p.m. Park tweeted, "Fun! We are the #1 trending hashtag in the US right now ... Keep it up! Park's mood understandably soured a few hours later as Twitter interactions hit 200 per minute, many of them oozing racist and sexist vitriol, including rape and death threats.
The next morning Twitchy published another post defending Park that made it seem as if she and Malkin were united on the issue. At no point did Park publicly distance herself from Malkin, reject her politics, or at least express concern that Malkin's vicious real-world racism might harm the campaign to address racism in the fictional world. Park's only comment the night of March 27 to Malkin was to declare, "I'm Christian, too," at 8:56 p.m.
While Malkin and Twitchy supported Park, Park concluded that Colbert fans were behind the torrent of abuse directed at her. Park tweeted that night to Colbert's personal account, "Dear @StephenAtHome--your years of satire have failed when your fans send rape/death threats to an asian woman for critiquing your work." From the Twitter feeds of abusers calling her "chink" and "rice nigger," nearly all look to be right-wing trolls.

MICHELLE MALKIN BLAMES OBAMA FOR RACISM BECAUSE OF...JAY-Z?


(Note that as a part of her resume Fox helpfully points out that she's "left-handed")

LEFT-RIGHT INTERSECTIONALITY By March 28, #CancelColbert burned through the media. Park's article in Time indicated that Cancel Colbert was the goal. But in an interview with The New Yorker the same day, Park sounded like Malkin, saying she didn't really want to cancel Colbert, despite the hashtag. Park said of Colbert's sketch, "That sort of racial humor just makes people who hide under the title of progressiveness more comfortable." Malkin completed the Freaky Friday switch, sounding like Park when she tweeted that afternoon, "For all you CLWM's [clueless white males] lecturing brown & yellow women about how we don't get the 'satire' ..."
Park obviously is not responsible for Malkin trying to co-opt her message. But given the number of times she retweets or favorites Malkin, and acknowledges criticism but is silent about it, this suggests she is keeping quiet about Malkin's politics so as to benefit from her support.
Three anti-racist feminists who have been in touch with Park say "she might be in over her head" in tangoing with Malkin. Juliet Shen, who calls Park a "former friend," says she was "shocked" to see Malkin and Park "were talking to each other, and in a way supporting each other." Another source says Malkin "doesn't support Park, she is just eager to use her to slam liberals."
Shen thinks Malkin is using Park to "change people's opinions about her, and in that way help loop Asian-Americans into right-wing politics." She suggests both Park and Malkin may be "using each other for an opportunity to get more visibility in communities neither of them had a lot of presence in."
Shen says, "It is confusing to see why Park wouldn't denounce Malkin of all people," especially when Park is quick to fling around insults such as "anti-blackness, racism, sexism, homophobia [against]other organizers in the Asian-American community." She says Park might be afraid "if she did publicly criticize Malkin, she has this huge following that could easily turn on Suey."
One source who asked Park about Malkin's support for Cancel Colbert claimed Park expressed her distaste for Malkin but then did not respond when asked if she would repudiate Malkin publicly.
Park's first comment about Malkin came on March 30. The previous day Jeff Yang slammed #CancelColbert and the limits of Twitter as a social justice tool in the Wall Street Journal. Park broke with Yang that evening, calling him "a gaslighting self-promoting patriarch." Shen wrote in a blog post that it's common practice among Park's followers to accuse others of gaslighting, that is, trying to deliberately twist someone's memory. At 3:42 a.m. Park tweeted at Yang, "@michellemalkin has been a better friend than you."

MICHELLE MALKIN DISPLAYS HER JOURNALISTIC SKILLS:


On April 1, Malkin threw down in support of Park, making no bones of her intention to use Park to sanitize right-wing racism.
"Question: Who are the most prominent, public purveyors of Asian stereotypes and ethnic language-mocking in America?
"The right answer is liberal Hollywood and Democrats.
"The wrong and slanderous answer is conservatives..."
After denigrating Colbert as an "illegal alien amnesty lobbyist," Malkin applauded Park for leading a group of "diehard liberals" to "tenaciously" question Colbert and his defenders as "race-baiting liberals who hid behind their self-professed progressiveness." Malkin also took the opportunity to bash Muslims and defend her internment book.
Finally on April 1 Park offered some ambiguous criticism, tweeting, "Michelle Malkin cosigning my work means my message sucks, but white supremacists threatening rape cosigning Angry Asian Man means...what?"




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By this last tweet she apparently means that if Colbert is not going to be held responsible for some of the vile racist tweets and comments sent her way then she should not be held responsible for Malkin's support. Which seems like like a fair point on the surface until you remember that;
a) Park clearly sought and encouraged the support of Malkin and the far right to attack Colbert and promote herself whereas Colbert at no point encouraged, even obliquely, anyone to attack Park in any way.
b) Both Park and Malkin specifically do hold Colbert responsible for even the most offensive threatening tweets, even after he specifically and publicly denounced them, which Park has never done with Malkin.



So Suey Park; self appointed leader of "18 Million Asians" is happy to team up with someone who's opinions about the very issues that a Anti-racist Asian leader should be aware of are beyond the pale. As stated Malkin is not only a defender of the Japanese Internment, she is currently hawking a book about it. The millions of Asian Muslims should appreciate that Malkin considers them to be a bunch of terrorists who should be deported. She is of course a defender of the Vietnam War and all the atrocities committed there, and I can safely assume ditto for the Philippines. I don't know that Malkin has ever said anything about the Chinese who worked on the railroads in often dangerous and sometimes fatal conditions for starvation wages. But given her typically Republican contempt for the working class I think we can predict what her opinions on that would be, regardless of race. As for the campaign by some Chinese and Japanese for restitution of the Head Tax charged in the early twentieth century; Malkin is naturally contemptuous of any talk of "reparations". In fact in the past Malkin has been quick to denounce any complaints of racism by Asians, like Park's, as "self-pitying and grievance-mongering." Until she realized that this same "grievance-mongering could be harnessed to attack an enemy and increase her own brand. And Park was just as cynical and opportunistic.

Park gives Malkin some hope (however illusory) of winning over Asians to the Republican Party (right now they vote overwhelmingly Democratic). All Malkin really has to offer Park's "revolution" is attention. Because apparently the medium is the message. No matter how corrupted that message becomes. Marshal McLuhan would have no doubt had some pithy things to say about this but then again Suey Park wouldn't have listened because he was another white guy.

Former friends and allies like Shen and Yang are convinced that Park doesn't actually agree with Malkin and knows she is being used to further a far right agenda but is prepared to go along in order to reach a bigger audience. So she's a cynical opportunist who believes the ends justify the means. That's real inspiring. But what in fact what is the end goal? Not only did Colbert not get cancelled, he got promoted. Are there about to be some news sitcoms and talk shows with Asian hosts I'm not aware of? I doubt it. The reason there are a number of black and gay characters on TV now than there were in the 1990's is not because Spike Lee protested the Oscars. It's because the networks and advertisers decided there was a big enough audience to cater to. Even on it's own stated goals Parks' campaign won't change television. As for the larger goal of a starting a "revolution"; well let's just say #CancelColbert is not exactly the storming of the Winter Palace.

SHORT CUT TO NOWHERE
The original anarchists of the Victorian era had a name for it; "Propaganda By Deed". The idea that a revolutionary elite could jumpstart the revolution merely by staging big public events like bombings and high profile assassinations thus removing the need of years of organizing and education. Such high profile publicity stunts would serve to inspire the masses to rise up. Such revolutionaries as Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxembourg warned against this simplistic tactic but it had an obvious attraction for the impatient or marginalized. In the 1960's and 70's a new generation of far leftists like the Red Brigades, Red Army, Baader-Meinhoff, FLQ, PFLP, SLA, Animal Liberation Front, Tupamaros, Weathermen and in another way the Yippies and Rhino Party would try it again with similar lack of results. It is also the basic tactical philosophy that Al Quida uses. I am not suggesting in any way that Suey Park is a terrorist of course, that would be silly. I am pointing out that the idea of a easy bake revolution or large scale societal change through publicity stunts is not new. It's also never worked. Not even once.

Rosa Luxembourg said that the first job of the revolutionary was to "agitate, educate, organize". There were no short cuts. Mao, Ho Chi Mihn, Che and Castro said that the revolutionary should be out amongst the people, not preaching from an ivory tower, much less a twitter feed. Park has not only failed on both counts, she is not even interested in trying to do the grubby, time consuming and difficult work of rallying support for her cause, which if it is to combat racism, is laudable. Worse by relying on exclusionary slash-and-burn rhetoric, name calling, cherry picking outrage and a deeply troubling alliance with a vile demagogue she has burned any bridges she might have crossed and made enemies she did not need to have in exchange for her fifteen minutes of fame. She will not get another chance. She will no doubt still get to monitor the media for stuff to be offended about and sent out snide outraged tweets. Occasionally she may even get an apology. But I suspect people will tire of her hectoring act if they haven't already. People don't like puritan scolds even if they're funny, which for all her claims of being a comedian, Park is not. Spike Lee used to protest the Oscars until people started laughing at him, and then ignoring him. And he had actual talent and a real body of work to point to. Park has a twitter page and some sleazy new friends who will tire of her if she ever steps out of line.

If Suey Park gets to be called a "revolutionary" then right now the ghost of Che Guevera is smacking himself in the head and saying; "That does it; I want those t-shirts back". And yes I get that as a white male I am the enemy and my opinion doesn't matter so I just wasted a fair amount of time writing this.