Issue #156
Disinfotainment Today
By Michael Dare
Michael Jackson's Lament
They can play in his park unafraid
Michael is not trying to get laid
And if they should chance to spend the night
He'll respect their innocent delight
He can write a tune that's nice and lilty
You can never prove that he is guilty
He can make a plausible rebuttal
All he ever wants to do is cuddle
He has made a promise you can trust
The jury gave a verdict that was just
He will have to wait till they are men
He won't sleep with little boys again
Michael swoons
with a bunch of hairy ass baboons
Michael shouts
Underneath his worries and his doubts
Michael laughs
with an ocelot and two giraffes
Michael hurls
at the thought of touching little girls
When he goes to court he always wins
He won't go to jail for his sins
In his brain there is a major glitch
He won't be another convict's bitch
When it comes to ten o'clock or more
Michael's gonna moon walk out the door
One hand clapping will be Michael's Zen
He won't sleep with little boys again
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Not Enough Audacity (nytimes.com)
President Obama has eloquently explained the case for health care reform, but will he compromise so much to get a plan through Congress that it won't do the job?
Jim Nintzel: Q&A With Elections Expert David Schleiche (tucsonweekly.com)
Q: Explain what you mean by rational ignorance.
A: Voters have very little reason or incentive to learn very much about politics. It doesn't affect your day-to-day life. The odds that your vote is going to matter in an election are very small.
Mark Morford: Michael Jackson vs. the news (sfgate.com)
There's meaningful, there's epic and there's revolutionary. What about all three?
Mark Lawson: "TV matters: Good Morning America" (guardian.co.uk)
US news broadcasters tend to treat encounters with the head of state much like UK anchors treat interviews with royalty - they lose all sense of scepticism.
Poor Elijah (Peter Berger): Education's New Angle (irascibleprofessor.com)
Education experts have spent the past forty years fighting about curriculum, which cutting through the usual jargon means the stuff we're trying to teach kids.
Andrew Tobias: Arousing My Albedo (andrewtobias.com)
Worried about your carbon footprint? Instead of buying a new, more fuel efficient car for $30,000, you might consider buying a case of "striping spray paint" for $56. In the first place, you save the cost to the environment of MAKING a new car (you think energy and chemicals and carbon emissions don't go into THAT?). And in the second, by my calculations, in this example, you save $29,944.
Motown memories (guardian.co.uk)
As Martha Reeves, one of the queens of soul music, tours the UK, she tells Amy Fleming about race, riots, and how Obama reminds her of Marvin Gaye.
Walter Tunis: After years as indie act, the Avett Brothers hit it bigger (McClatchy Newspapers)
For years, the Avett Brothers operated as a sort of rootsy, indie antiquity in motion.
Matt Coker: Orange County Music - Dave Alvin Remembers His Pal Chris Gaffney With A New Tribute Cd (ocweekly.com)
Dave Alvin remembers his pal Chris Gaffney onstage and on disc.
Who stole the soul of the boy from Indiana? (guardian.co.uk)
Michael Jackson has gone from boy wonder to circus freak in his 40-year career, with stints en route as 'king of pop', messiah figure and public enemy. How did it happen, and can we expect yet another incarnation when he takes to the stage in London for his comeback concerts next month? Peter Conrad revisits the life and times of pop's Peter Pan.
Seth Stevenson: will.i.shill (slate.com)
The Black Eyed Peas have a splashy new ad for Target. Is "selling out" a thing of the past?
Chris Riemenschneider: Phoenix took in its cultural surroundings to craft a breakout album (Star Tribune)
This year's answer to Vampire Weekend and Franz Ferdinand - a buzzing indie-rock band with a catchy, danceable record - the French synth-pop quartet Phoenix has not one but two singles popping up across the United States this summer, "Lisztomania" and "1901." Now if only most American listeners knew what the songs are actually about.
The Weekly Poll
Next poll will be June 30, as my system is going in for a complete overhaul by the local computer boffin...
BadToTheBoneBob
replied:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit warmer.
Promotes Civics
Richard Dreyfuss
Former "Jaws" actor Richard Dreyfuss says America is falling short in preparing children to become leaders and participants in the political system.
The Academy Award-winning star of "The Goodbye Girl" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" now describes himself as a full-time civic activist. He tells the Maine State Bar Association civics should be a required course from kindergarten on so that students get the tools and enthusiasm needed to lead the country.
Dreyfuss spoke Friday at the association's summer meeting in Bar Harbor, a tiny coastal town. He now devotes himself full time to a nonprofit initiative to revive the civics curriculum.
He says the United States is unique in being a nation bound together by ideas and each generation must be taught what the country stands for.
Richard Dreyfuss
July 1 Celebration
Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon's publicist says a celebration of the late "Tonight" show sidekick, who died Tuesday at 86, is set for July 1.
McMahon's publicist, Howard Bragman, tells The Associated Press Friday that NBC will host the untelevised event, scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. PST at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood.
Bragman says details are still being finalized, including the guest list.
Ed McMahon
Bash Brits In Memory Test
US Seniors
American seniors 'remember when' long after their British counterparts have forgotten what day of the week it is, researchers report in a study released this week.
The trans-Atlantic gap, as measured in a "memory and awareness test," amounted to a decade of aging, according to the survey of 8,299 Americans and 5,276 Britons over 65.
75-year-olds in the US, in other words, scored far better than their sun-starved age peers, and equalled the performance of Brits 10 years younger, according to the study, published in London-based journal BMC Geriatrics.
"The better cognitive performance of US adults was actually quite surprising," said Kenneth Langa, a researcher at the University of Michigan and the study's lead author.
US Seniors
Not The Very Best
Nestle
Inspection reports from a Nestle USA cookie dough factory released Friday show the company refused several times in the past five years to provide Food and Drug Administration inspectors with complaint logs, pest-control records and other information.
The records, which date back to 2004, were made public after Nestle's Toll House refrigerated, prepackaged cookie dough was discovered to be the likely culprit in an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 69 people in 29 states, according to the latest estimates from the federal Centers for Disease Control. The CDC is investigating the outbreak along with the FDA.
Nestle voluntarily recalled all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products made at the Danville, Va., factory late last week after the FDA informed the company it suspected consumers may have been exposed to E. coli bacteria after eating the dough raw.
According to the reports released by the FDA, the company refused to allow FDA investigators access to certain documents in at least 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Nestle
Flawed Database Overcharged Patients
Ingenix
Congressional investigators said Wednesday two-thirds of the U.S. health insurance industry used a faulty database that overcharged patients for seeing doctors outside their insurance network, costing Americans billions of dollars in inflated medical bills.
The flawed database is operated by Ingenix, a subsidiary of health insurer UnitedHealth Group, which agreed in January to pay $350 million to settle allegations that it deliberately kept rates low to underpay doctors, driving up expenses for patients.
More than 100 million Americans have plans that allow them to see doctors who are not part of their insurance network. For more than a decade, insurers submitted data to Ingenix to determine the typical cost for care received outside their networks.
But congressional investigators say companies would deliberately skew data to underestimate the costs of medical services, leaving patients to pay more in out-of-pocket expenses.
Ingenix
Wraps Up
'Jena 6'
Five members of the Jena Six pleaded no contest Friday to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration.
State District Judge Tom Yeager then sentenced the five, standing quietly surrounded by their lawyers, to seven days unsupervised probation and fined $500. It was a far less severe end to their cases than seemed possible when the six students - all of whom are black - were initially charged with attempted murder in the 2006 attack on Justin Barker, a white classmate. They became known as the "Jena Six," after the central Louisiana town where the beating happened.
The only member of the group to serve jail time was Bell, who pleaded guilty in December 2007 to second-degree battery and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Four of Friday's defendants have graduated from high school, and all are attending or getting ready to attend college. Purvis has completed his first year and Bell is planning to attend college this fall. Beard is a senior in high school in Connecticut.
'Jena 6'
Plea Deal
Coolio
Rapper Coolio has pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to felony cocaine possession in a deal that requires him to spend 18 months in rehab.
District attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison says the 45-year-old rapper, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey, entered his plea Friday in Superior Court.
As part of the plea deal, misdemeanor charges of battery and possession of a smoking device were dismissed.
A judge ordered Coolio to enter an 18-month drug rehabilitation program. He can request the judge dismiss his case if he successfully completes the program.
Coolio
Proceeds Despite Legal Scuffle
"Old Boy"
Steven Spielberg and Will Smith are moving forward with plans for a remake of "Old Boy" despite a complex, behind-the-scenes rights wrangle involving the Japanese publishers of the original manga and the Korean producers of Park Chan-Wook's 2003 cult hit.
Futabasha, publisher of the manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya, has filed a case against Show East in Seoul, alleging the Korean company never had the right to negotiate a remake.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that Show East has shut down and its CEO, Kim Dong-Ju, has disappeared. Big Egg, a co-producer of the ultra-violent revenge flick, has also closed up shop, and its former staffers are unreachable.
South Korean sales company Cineclick Asia, which represented Show East's "Oldboy" in international territories, actually negotiated the remake deal with Universal.
"Old Boy"
Closer To Changing State Name
Rhode Island
The country's smallest state has the longest official name: "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."
A push to drop "Providence Plantations" from that name advanced farther than ever on Thursday when House lawmakers voted 70-3 to let residents decide whether their home should simply be called the "State of Rhode Island." It's an encouraging sign for those who believe the formal name conjures up images of slavery, while opponents argue it's an unnecessary rewriting of history that ignores Rhode Island's tradition of religious liberty and tolerance.
Rhode Island's unwieldy name reflects its turbulent colonial history, a state that consisted of multiple and sometimes rival settlements populated by dissidents.
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his unorthodox religious views, minister Roger Williams set out in 1636 and settled at the northern tip of Narragansett Bay, which he called Providence Plantations. Williams founded the first Baptist church in America and became famous for embracing the separation of church and state, a legal principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights a century later.
Rhode Island
In Memory
Tim Krekel
Guitarist and songwriter Tim Krekel, who played with the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Bo Diddley and others, has died, a statement on his website said on Thursday.
Krekel, 58, died on Wednesday at his home in Louisville, Kentucky. His health had deteriorated after undergoing surgery for abdominal cancer, the statement said.
He played numerous gigs in Nashville and toured widely with his own bands as well as others', collaborating with Delbert McClinton, Billy Swann and Kris Kristofferson.
He joined Buffett's band as lead guitarist in the late 1970s, and left the group to start a solo career that included the albums "Crazy Me" and "Over the Fence." He later formed Tim Krekel & the Groovelbillys and honed his roots-rock style.
Krekel's songs were recorded by numerous artists that included Rick Nelson and Canned Heat. Crystal Gayle had a hit with his song "Turning Away" and Patty Loveless with "You Can Feel Bad."
Tim Krekel
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