Tuesday, January 28, 2014

HE WHO FEELS IT, KNOWS IT.

There'll be a lot of garbage talked about Pete Seeger's politics today. (At the moment there's a post-mortem hush, and even Ann Althouse is gracious, but the assholes are already crawling out.) There'll probably be some cavilling about the quality of Seeger's ethnomusicology, too, and about appropriation and authenticity and all that shit.

But today I'm thinking of him as a player -- because though he has a fat political legacy on which others can speak eloquently, he was also, I would say foremost, a musician, someone in love with songs and sounds who had the gift to transmit that love to large groups of people. He was a lefty Brahmin who took up hill country music, and that mix could have and maybe should have been ridiculous, like a Puritan trying to swing. But it isn't, in him; Seeger felt the music, and if his diction was a little sharper than was traditional, you could still tell he felt it. His singing was like John Carradine playing Casy in The Grapes of Wrath -- a performance, a bit stagey, but absolutely shot through with the true feeling of a time and a people. And with something timeless, too, that can still speak to us.

"Wimoweh" starts about 1:35 in this clip from Wasn't That a Time, the doc about The Weavers' 1980 reunion. Watch Pete. He's possessed by the sound, as much a raver and a wailer as that other great appropriator, Buddy Holly.



At the time he was 60 years old, and he kept right on going till the end. Music is so much more important than politics, really.

UPDATE. Charlie Pierce understands. Many good lines:
He loved the country and its people and the idea of it that outlasted so many attempts to hijack it for other purposes. Pete Seeger was a great American because he dared to be thought otherwise. That is the only real qualification. It gets more dear as the years go by.
UPDATE 2. Somebody called Howard Husock at National Review:
In other words, Pete Seeger led the way in devising the formula that pushed popular culture leftward: the music (or the movies) had to work as art and must avoid heavy-handedness.
Yes -- the art had to work as art! Ingenious, these communists! No wonder, as Husock complains, "the cultural Right has long, and unsuccessfully, been trying to match his example" -- they don't even know that art and politics are different things. What miserable lives they must have.

UPDATE 3. Donald Douglas goes into comments, calls one of the other commenters a "cum-receptacle"; said another commenter wonders if his employer would like to see that comment; Douglas puts up a post called "@Edroso Commenter Threatens Workplace Harassment Over Pete Seeger Communist Blogging." Later, he comes back and threatens another commenter. I've banned him; he can issue his Cries For Help elsewhere. What is it with these people?

235 comments:

  1. thefritopundito10:17 AM

    Damn, that brought tears to my eyes. Seeger really understood that song, even if he didn't really know what the song was about. In the great article on LST in Rolling Stone, it said Seeger blew his voice out singing that song. Sure doesn't sound like it here.

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  2. JennOfArk10:17 AM

    Leave it to Donalde Douglas to lead the rush to the bottom.


    RIP, Pete.

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  3. He was a beautiful person, through and through, and one of the iconic human beings of the last century. Something my mother said to me about the Beatles, when they came back from India and refused to lie about how awful the Maharishi was, was "They never betrayed us." People can argue about that but I feel that way about Seeger. He never betrayed himself, or us.


    He's one of the few people that although I never met him and I don't think I ever saw him perform live, was so integral to my experience growing up, to the music I listened to, to the left itself, that I feel as though my favorite great uncle had died. I'm really in mourning for this great man, even though I am sure that for him and his family it was as close to a "good death" as you can get.

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  4. Fearguth10:36 AM

    Thank you, Roy. As Nietzsche said, "Without music, life would be an error."

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  5. JennOfArk10:43 AM

    What you said. Maybe the highest praise that anyone can hope to receive is that they are an authentic person - true to themselves and what they value. Seeger was kind of the avatar of being an authentic person.

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  6. M. Krebs10:55 AM

    Great version of Wimoweh! My only memory of it is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which was a hit when I was four. Never knew who did it, but thanks to the internet I now know that it was the Tokens who had the hit, whille the Weavers and others were doing it years before.

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  7. Jeffrey_Kramer11:15 AM

    Seeger was born about the same time as my father, who (along with many Jews of his generation) followed a politic arc which took him from Communism to Labor Zionism to left-liberal Democratic politics (anti-McCarthy, pro-Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam) to liberal-centrist politics. Seeger's arc never bent that much. My parents never stopped listening to his music.

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  8. glennisw11:34 AM

    Not gonna read him. But I shoulda guessed.

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  9. whetstone11:36 AM

    That article is *amazing.* One of the best magazine pieces I've ever read.

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  10. whetstone11:43 AM

    FWIW, his step-mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger--responsible in large part, I believe, for his interest in folk music--was an amazing composer. Jenny Lin's album of her piano works is awesome.

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  11. Emily6811:45 AM

    Talk about Seeger being a "player." I just recently saw a video of him at ago 90+ still being able to pick a banjo. I wish he'd told us the secret to keep our fingers that agile.


    I saw him at a workshop about work songs at the Berkeley Folk Festival in ~1967. He said he once spoke to prisoners on a chain-gang somewhere in the deep South and they were singing Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang." They told him they'd learned it off the record. He gave me his autograph and was as nice a famous guy as you could want.

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  12. Ellis_Weiner12:08 PM

    Wait a minute--that's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," by the Tokens. Is THAT where that song came from? Jesus Christ, nobody tells me anything.

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  13. Ellis_Weiner12:10 PM

    Not so fast. It depends on what they value. We are currently ruled and owned by people entirely true to themselves and what they value. Alas.

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  14. Ellis_Weiner12:11 PM

    The Lion Sleeps/Tokens jinx.

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  15. Davis X. Machina12:27 PM

    He was a lefty Brahmin who took up hill country music, and that mix
    could have and maybe should have been ridiculous, like a Puritan trying
    to swing.


    A born teacher. If he had never taken to music, and politics, he would have been a legendary, John-McPhee-worthy, New England prep school teacher.

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  16. waspuppet12:33 PM

    I always loved the importance he placed on getting people to sing along. Everyone thought that was some hammy showbiz move. I talked to him once and his grandson Tao several times: it wasn't. He was making you memorize the song and get it into your bones. He thought that was more important than you hearing him sing it yet again.

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  17. Ellis_Weiner12:55 PM

    Actually I read you wrong anyway. You didn't say, "the best a person can be." You said "the highest praise they can receive," i.e., from others. So yes, you're right: it's about one's behavior in public, and having that honestly reflect one's inner beliefs and values.

    Meanwhile, to read his HUAC testimony is to wonder if one would, under those circs, have behaved with such guts and class.

    http://www.peteseeger.net/HUAC.htm

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  18. Donalde Douglas ISREAL!

    http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/33231.html
    ~

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  19. M. Krebs1:04 PM

    It really is interesting how many musicians are able to keep their chops -- and sometimes to even get better -- well into their senior years. I marvel at the fact that people like Sonny Rollins (83), McCoy Tyner (75), and Wayne Shorter (80) are still out there working. Jeff Beck will be 70 this year, and he's better than ever (and he's been better than anyone else for over 40 years).Those are just some that are on my radar; there are many more. Something about playing music keeps people young -- provided they survive youth without too many self-destructive urges.

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  20. M. Krebs1:08 PM

    LST?

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  21. I can't stop playing this song.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-o3CJytIPE
    ~

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  22. Spaghetti Lee1:11 PM

    I gotta say, if there's really someone out there ready to argue that Seeger wasn't authentic or was just a condescending dilettante because he was born in middle-class NYC, then that would at least serve one purpose: I know I'd never have to listen to their opinions on music ever again.

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  23. To be honest, I never particularly cared for Seeger's "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" until I heard this version in 1998. It's on the soundtrack to the HBO Films version of Neil Sheehan's great Vietnam history "A Bright Shining Lie."

    http://powerpop.blogspot.com/2014/01/where-have-all-folksingers-gone.html

    I have no idea who the guy singing it is, but it's quietly devastating.

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  24. How dare a rich bastard like FDR talk about poverty. What a hypocrite!!!

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  25. And here's Pete with what remains the greatest folkie instrumental ever.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iST9wBDVv6Y

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  26. Wow -- just took a look at a couple of my favorite wingnut cesspool sites.

    The "good riddance to another dead Commie" stuff is as nauseating as it is predictable.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Davis X. Machina2:16 PM

    Jesse Helms tried to strip Pete's Kennedy Center honors retroactively.
    Not the biggest dick move Helms ever made, but the dickiest dick move, if that makes any sense.

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  28. Yes, I thought that was kind of a weird charge. I don't think of those categories--brahmin/blue collar as all that distinct, actually, when you look at the way people lived in this country from 1776-1920's. Upper class people fell in class all the time and ended up working at some pretty brutal jobs, and lower class people were rising up too. My great grandfathers both came to this country more or less penniless--my paternal grandfather's daughter and son in law both went to Harvard and became intellectuals and professor types. That's one fucking generation from shtetl to Harvard. Meanwhile Richard Dana who wrote 2 Years Before the Mast was at Harvard and then spent two years whaling and sailing around the world (c1840).

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  29. timb1172:35 PM

    The kooks are out all over: from Article 5 conventions to denouncing Seeger for believing people deserve to be free and dignified

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  30. There are whole websites populated by people who identified with the Burt Lancaster character in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY.

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  31. thanks again, roy.

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  32. JennOfArk3:12 PM

    Check out his version of the Ode to Joy:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HOIyqXIc8Q

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  33. thefritopundito3:14 PM

    Sorry "Lion Sleeps Tonite"

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  34. M. Krebs3:22 PM

    It really is amazing. I mean, even if you don't like his politics, it's pretty obvious that he was decent man.


    Just the opposite of, say, Rush Limbaugh, who, even if you agree with his politics, is obviously an evil fuck.

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  35. Donald, I'm going to uprate your comments because you seem to really need a hug. C'mon, honey, let me give you an enormous affirmation! You *are* someone, someone important,someone whose opinions matter! The world is full of people who just wait to hear them! Hug ((((((()))))))! If I could reach through the screen I'd send you a kitty picture and maybe a big 'ol milkshake and maybe you'd finally get the love you've always been looking for.

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  36. glennisw4:33 PM

    Wonder how your employer's administration would enjoy reading a copy of this comment?

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  37. Mutaman4:34 PM

    If I can give John Wayne credit for making good movies, why can't the jerks on the right give Pete credit for making good music?

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  38. Because they are disturbed, pathetic, people who would rather cling to an obvious lie than handle the truth?

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  39. DonaldDouglas4:38 PM

    Aimai: You already made my day proving you're a wannabe communist, lol. Don't change!

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  40. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the main reason I was glad the Vietnam War ended was that I could like Bob Hope's classic 40s comedies again.

    Yes, I'm very shallow.
    :-)

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  41. M. Krebs4:53 PM

    You mean he has a job?

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  42. if his twitter feed is any indication, it's giggling with dan riehl and robert stacy mccain all day long.

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  43. mrstilton5:20 PM

    Does he have tenure yet (assuming he has a tenure-track job)?

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  44. Howlin Wolfe5:33 PM

    Shorter Donalde: COMMIE COMMIE COMMIE SASQUATCH ISREAL!!!

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  45. Howlin Wolfe5:34 PM

    Donna has a job?

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  46. Howlin Wolfe5:37 PM

    I think the Donald/Donna has left the building. I'm sure he's thought better of his disgusting little tantrum.

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  47. Howlin Wolfe5:39 PM

    It's interesting he chose you to attack, figuring you are a woman and fair game for such an outburst of puerile, ineffective invective. I sure admire the way you reacted to him. It was reminiscent of Mr. Seeger's responses to the idiots on the HUAC.

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  48. You know that crazy, exuberant main title theme from "Raising Arizona?" The one with banjo, whistling and yodeling?

    It seems many people don't know that it was adapted from "Goofing Off Suite" by Seeger. For those who think he's too "on-the-nose," this is a good antidote.

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  49. M. Krebs6:31 PM

    And how dare Al Gore drive a gasoline-powered vehicle!

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  50. M. Krebs6:39 PM

    ...some pretty amazing life stories.

    Speaking of which...



    Amazing is an understatement.

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  51. TGuerrant6:55 PM

    Crave her attention, eh? What next? Toilet papering her house?

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  52. TGuerrant7:07 PM

    Some people love to hate; other people love to dance. You're quite a dancer yourself, Aimai, and I'm very glad you hang out here.

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  53. TGuerrant7:28 PM

    **ACTING!** Yet Lancaster himself was a liberal who grew up in East Harlem, supported the 1963 March on Washington, and vocally opposed McCarthyism and the war in Vietnam. He even managed to snatch an Oscar away from Laurence Olivier, Jack Lemmon, and Spencer Tracey by kicking fundie ass. Times were different then, I guess.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQql7wXtGoI

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  54. Mooser7:30 PM

    Well, you've certainly shown yourself to good advantage, here, Douglas. Don't go into the backwoods alone!

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  55. Mooser7:33 PM

    Douglas, I don't want to be harsh, but you are aware you are exactly what is generally considered, by a very broad cross-section of people, as an "asshole", I presume?
    One of those red-banner blog guys, I'll wager.

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  56. Mooser7:35 PM

    Toilet paper her house? Abominable!

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  57. AGoodQuestion7:36 PM

    This I didn't know about. I'm not surprised, exactly. Seeger was in his 90s and had generally been laying low for a while. I'm moved, though, by all he did. When I was a lad we had a copy of Precious Friend, his live album with Arlo Guthrie. Seeger's bigness of heart was evident to anyone who'd care to listen.


    On a lighter note, I imagine Husock standing in front of a large poster of, say, Tom Paxton, warning his assembled troops, "Boy's our enemy is a wily one."

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  58. AGoodQuestion7:40 PM

    Are you testifying as an expert in not knowing shit?

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  59. DonaldDouglas7:42 PM

    @glennisw Wouldn't be the first time, you f-king scumbag leftist.

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  60. AGoodQuestion7:45 PM

    I like that. It's a side of Nietzsche that not enough people appreciate.

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  61. AGoodQuestion7:51 PM

    See also his chilling red-baiting columnist in The Sweet Smell of Success.

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  62. I'm touched, Tguerrant.

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  63. I'll just leave this here. From James Wolcott:

    Who is Donald Douglas? Apart from being a typical conservative blogger with a pig-sty site, heidentifies himself as a "a pro-victory Associate Professor of Political Science teaching in Southern California." I have to question the wisdom and quality of any higher institution, even one lodged in Orange County, that would have on its faculty a man who would write, and I quote: "F*** you, ...Self-Hating Skankwad. Go shovel your ****pile of sickening self-said academic superiority somewhere else, you ugly motherf***ing prick."*

    As Bertie Wooster once said, These are remarks that verge upon the personal.

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  64. Apparently...not.

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  65. I see... So, people at work dont have breaks, eh?

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  66. He was a Commie. He is probably in outer darkness sniffing glue, dropping and planning on satans next thousand yr reign with Joe Stalin and Hitler

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  67. You're buddy was a worshipper of the Fuhrer & until Pete Seeger’s death at 94
    last night, he was perhaps the last man alive to say that he supported
    Hitler, Stalin, and Ho Chi Minh. That’s quite the totalitarian trifecta.

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  68. How dare gasbag Al Gore pretend that we have a warming problem in 13 below.

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  69. Good. You know better than to fuck with me ;)

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  70. M. Krebs8:30 PM

    Interesting schtick you have there -- pretending to be a blithering idiot in order to discredit conservatives. Well played, madam!

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  71. M. Krebs8:32 PM

    Wouldn't fuck you with Ronald Regan's dick.

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  72. j_bird8:32 PM

    May we all be possessed with a little bit of Pete's desire to change the world for the better.

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  73. mortimer20008:38 PM

    Lemme guess. "Mad" doesn't mean "angry."

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  74. mortimer20008:38 PM

    Well said, Roy.

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  75. Ellis_Weiner8:44 PM

    "...devising the formula that pushed popular culture leftward: the music (or
    the movies) had to work as art and must avoid heavy-handedness."

    (Takes pipe from mouth, spits into spittoon) When I was a young man at Nat. Lampoon, we used to cite (fictional) Daily News headlines of obvious-things-as-breaking-news, e.g,. SAY POPE CATHOLIC and PROF: 1 + 1 = 2.


    Nice to see National Review picking up the torch.

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  76. tigrismus8:49 PM

    I'm imagining how it must be to be a student of his, particularly a female one. Such seething hatred is not something I expect people to spew forth as though they're proud of it.

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  77. M. Krebs8:51 PM

    You forgot Pol Pot, Mussolini, bin Laden, Idi Amin, Charles Manson, and Caligula.

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  78. M. Krebs8:56 PM

    That constant rap you're taking? It's about you.

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  79. M. Krebs9:01 PM

    Long Beach City College
    http://www.lbcc.edu/HistPolsci/DDouglas.cfm

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  80. DonaldDouglas9:13 PM

    LOL!

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  81. Pass it on to our neoliberal President, will ya?
    ~

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  82. M. Krebs9:28 PM

    Long Beach City College looks like the sort of place that doesn't even have academic ranks. (Could be wrong.)

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  83. the cultural Right has long, and unsuccessfully, been trying to match his example


    Pete Seeger lived, he jumped trains with Woody Guthrie and he hung out with hard-living men like Leadbelly. He was married to a half-Japanese woman as WW2 raged and defied HUAC. His music was an outgrowth of his life, it was organic. The cultural Right, as Husock put it, can never match his example because they want to create their answer in a lab, and the results are predictably monstrous.

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  84. "The Hungry i"? I always loved listening to my parents' copy of that album.

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  85. Rage, rage against the dying of the right..."

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  86. Taj Mahal is still actively touring, and he's in his 70s.

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  87. The crazy thing about the comment is that it's blaming liberal Jews for antisemitism.

    ReplyDelete
  88. TGuerrant9:54 PM

    Don't tell him about the Yeti Porn Project. We'll never get rid of him.

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  89. DonaldDouglas10:45 PM

    I'm a full professor, going on 15th year in September. But it's none of your business. And if you do make it your business I will hunt you down and will talk about it man to man, you evil motherf-ker.

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  90. M. Krebs10:52 PM

    So Long Beach City College awards the rank of full professor to a dimwit like you with an MA. Good for you, mooching off the public teat. But I still think you're lying.


    Bring it on, shit for brains. You couldn't hunt down a mouse in your own cupboards.

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  91. AGoodQuestion11:02 PM

    Oh, you could spend a fair amount of time unpacking the crazy things about etc.

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  92. M. Krebs11:28 PM

    I'm not stupid enough to provide it.

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  93. Poor Mandela, the nasty who gave orders to blow up shopping centers, banks, etc.
    The lefty great hero is so predictable anymore

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  94. M. Krebs11:28 PM

    oh baby!

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  95. redoubtagain11:30 PM

    Sorry about that. (Not that it matters, but it occurred to me--this is what unwrapped entitlement looks and sounds like.)

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  96. M. Krebs11:31 PM

    You really are very good at this. You should get an HBO special.

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  97. M. Krebs11:34 PM

    It does sound like a real threat, doesn't it? Too bad we don't have a record of it.

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  98. who's the department head at LBC?

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  99. You got that right, both are beautiful.


    That being said, I never should have installed that mirror on my ceiling, and did you have to take my favorite pair of silk boxers as a "souvenir"?

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  100. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume11:44 PM

    Why don't you have another vat of wine, you great dimwitted bint.

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  101. M. Krebs11:46 PM

    Dunno, you could look it up. But it's probably old news to him/her anyway. The only cure for such cases is usually retirement.

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  102. Smarter than Your Average Bear11:50 PM

    Proving they'll give a Ph.D to anyone these days.

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  103. glennisw11:57 PM

    Oh, my! It was my comment he posted about. I went over there and asked him why he didn't quote himself, in his post.


    What a to-do! M. Krebs, you kinda carried my bucket for me - thanks!

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  104. M. Krebs11:58 PM

    How old are you? 14?

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  105. M. Krebs12:06 AM

    Wow. An old fashioned blog war! Just like the good old days. Say, where's Jeff Goldstein?

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  106. BigHank5312:06 AM

    What is it with these people?


    Prof. Douglas has a Westboro Baptist schtick going. He will attempt to provoke behavior upon which claims of harassment can be based. He is, in fact, tenured and well aware of the precise legal limits of online behavior. A while back he got into it pretty hot and heavy with SEK over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. I certainly don't know any of the details but actual lawyers wound up involved and there was presumably some kind of agreement, as they appear to have left each other alone since then.

    He will be exceedingly careful to construct a situation in which he is the victim, and once he does so, will trumpet his victory to every dingbat that's convinced he's on a list to be rounded up and sent to a FEMA camp. It's an unpleasant combination of teenaged spite (over what, who knows) and adult skill: a troll with teeth.

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  107. Kevin Hayden12:07 AM

    Totally agree. He was all about 'participation' in the sing-alongs. Even opponents would often conceded that it was hard to stay polarized after singing alongside their political opponents. I don't think Pete knew this at the outset, but he came to some realization along the way that participation in the music was a powerful barrier-breaker.

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  108. Kevin Hayden12:12 AM

    Thanks, Aimai. Wolcott, per usual, nails with a hammer. Kind of an unfair fight, considering Douglas was only armed with a seventh grade Swingline stapler.

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  109. M. Krebs12:17 AM

    So he's a cyber-stalking harassment troll then. Interesting.

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  110. AmPowerBlog12:35 AM

    You're all a bunch of cowards and Communist scum. And fuck you Roy especially, f-king d-bag loser. You'd called me out and then allowed workplace harassment. F-k you, Communist scumbag.

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  111. M. Krebs12:37 AM

    Jesus, what's with the f-k and d-bag stuff? Is you mother watching you?

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  112. JennOfArk12:41 AM

    AAAAAAHHHHHH shaddup, willya?

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  113. M. Krebs12:56 AM

    Workplace harassment!!!!!

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  114. Jeffrey_Kramer1:31 AM

    "Is it good for the Jews? More importantly, is it good for those Jews who, sixty years after the fact, will still be traumatized by the prospect of anti-Semites blaming them for 'undermining America' because they belong to a 'race' which was, generally speaking, a little quicker than their fellow Americans to discover that Joe McCarthy was a dangerous charlatan?"

    Sadly, Mom and Dad never thought to ask themselves that question. I apologize on their behalf for the pain this has obviously brought you.

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  115. MichaelNewsham2:43 AM

    Love the man's music, though not this one:

    "Plow under!

    Plow under!

    Plow under

    Ev'ry fourth American boy."

    Stalinist propaganda issued after the Nazi-Soviet treaty, in which Pete attacks FDR for wanting to go to war against Hitler. The album "Songs for John Doe", saying the whole anti-fascist thing was a plot to kill American boys in defense of capitalism, came out just before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union,and every copy was assiduously hunted down and destroyed by the suddenly pro-war Young Communists.

    Okay, you may give him pass on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but he supported the USSR through East Berlin '53; Hungary '56; the Prague Spring '68, and finally had had enough with Poland and Solidarity-in 1980.

    Whatever other good things you have done and just causes you supported- and he did a lot!- you don't get a pass on that.

    http://www.samefacts.com/2013/08/archive/liberalism/pete-seeger-stalinism-and-decency/

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  116. Thanks Roy, and alicurati. I'll have a post up later this week. I knew the usual asses would act like asses about Pete, and it's the umpteenth useful litmus test for which side are you on...

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  117. Well--I'm really sure that Ted Nugent is, in fact, Seeger on the Right: a noted coward who shit his pants to avoid a war he claims to have supported, a foul mouthed intemperate asshole who likes to brag about shooting things but who would never, ever, put himself at risk. A political poseur who pretends he's fighting a power that doesn't even know he exists by appearing at well paid venues filled with fat right wing gun nuts just like himself. I don't think he was cooked up in a lab, exactly, but maybe that's because my father was a genetecist and I know what they are and are not capable of in the manufacture of chimera.

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  118. Nice work if you can get it. Thanks Obama for maintaining civil rights and employer laws relating to harassment! No "at will" for DD!

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  119. Just a quick note, Roy. I don't believe I called for DD's employer to be notified. I chided him gently for calling me a "cum dumpster" since, like his mother presumably, I have other aspects to my existence. I certainly joined in making fun of him, and even made fun of him for pretending to worry about empoyer harassment since his political side assures me that "at will" employment should be the norm in all employer/employee relationships. But I did not now, and never have, advocated for notifying his employer.


    I didn't go over to his site to post--what would be the point? These people are neither amusing nor informative as the quality of their posts here indicate. DD himself seems to have a fairly uninteresting form of politicized Tourettes in which his head jerks to the right and he spits out "commie" but, as we now know from the tragic case of Senator Alexander's pedophile chief of staff this probably results from a horrible case of sexual maladjustment as the result of mental abuse from his parents and friends when he was a child. I really have no doubt that his parents or some other authority figure beat him with wire hangers while shouting "commie scum"--possibly wearing a McCarthy mask. So when DD and his friends insult me I assume they are simply trying to stage an ur sex scene, tittilating themselves by imagining they are simultaneously both parties in this lovely drama. I can't think of any other reason that grown people need to ejaculate a long dead insult over people they don't know, and never will know.

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  120. William Miller7:28 AM

    "MR. SEEGER: I am sorry you are not interested in the song. It is a good song." I.e., "I would invite you, sir, to kiss my ass but decorum requires otherwise."

    ReplyDelete
  121. You know who else worship(s) --present tense--the Furhrer? The entire modern American Nazi Party and you know who is aligned with them? Hint: its not the party and the voters who elected America's first black President, for fairly obvious reasons.

    ReplyDelete
  122. William Miller7:32 AM

    Dude, do you talk to your students that way?

    ReplyDelete
  123. glennisw8:51 AM

    No, Aimai. It was I who posted a comment where I said I wondered what his employer would think. When I came back here, a few hours later, I saw Roy's update and went to DD's site and admitted up to making the comment, no apologies. I also told him I noticed he didn't

    quote himself, the words that I was responding to. My comment was not a threat to notify his employer, just a speculation what they'd think.

    ReplyDelete
  124. tigrismus8:57 AM

    Even if you had informed his employer of his little performance here, in what universe would that be harassment and the performance itself not?

    ReplyDelete
  125. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps9:05 AM

    Sarah Palin's America, where you can say whatever you dang well please because of the Amendments (all of them).

    ReplyDelete
  126. I don't think Johnny wrote any of the Ramones' songs- those duties fell on Joey and Dee Dee. The one overtly political Ramones' song is Bonzo Goes to Bitburg, which excoriates Reagan.

    ReplyDelete
  127. satch9:20 AM

    My god, can you imagine he wingnut implosion that will occur when Mort Sahl passes on...

    ReplyDelete
  128. Ve did say "a little bit." So the PPACA (esp. the Medicaid expansion)**, DADT, and even the minimum wage bump for federal contractors might qualify. And we're trying to talk to Iran for a change. Maybe someday, a Pete Seeger can be president, and oversee the dissolution of the US into environmentally-sustainable council communism. Until that day, though, I'll take the little bits where I can find them.



    **Hell, given that a "substantive" actual Republican health care plan just got released by Hatch and Company, and it would make things worse than the pre-PPACA status quo, we might have to start measuring "the better" from less than zero.

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  129. my father was a genetecist [sic] and I know what they
    are and are not capable of in the manufacture of chimera.


    Oh, I'll just bet you do. In unrelated news, has anyone ever seen Aimai and Boston-area superhero Puma Girl in the same place?

    ReplyDelete
  130. He went out of his way to pick a fight with you, using a vile, sexist line of attack, and when he realized that his target would fight back, he cried persecution. You have every right to do as g. suggested and let his employer know just what kind of person they've hired.

    ReplyDelete
  131. Sarah Palin's America, where you wingnuts can say whatever you they dang well please and not be criticized in any way for it


    Sorry for the pedantic editing, Doctor, but I just happen to have Sarah Palin's version of the Constitution right here (It got stuck to my shoe on the way in to work this morning).

    ReplyDelete
  132. Halloween_Jack9:54 AM

    Oh, look, everybody, it's a standard-issue Internet Tough Guy. He'll "hunt you down" and call you a cum receptacle, but he won't spell out "motherfucker." Such class!

    ReplyDelete
  133. Halloween_Jack9:56 AM

    Nothing saddens me more than the news that this execrable troll has reproduced.

    ReplyDelete
  134. J Neo Marvin9:57 AM

    Hell of a rhythm guitarist, but he didn't write the lyrics.

    ReplyDelete
  135. PulletSurprise10:02 AM

    ...on the California taxpayer's dime.

    ReplyDelete
  136. glennisw10:05 AM

    B4, i'm sure his school and his colleagues are already well aware of the kind of person he is.

    And I want to be clear - I don't feel strongly about notifying his school; what I posted was probably more akin to sayin, "You kiss your mom with that mouth?" I was more thinking to shame him, except I made the miscalculation that the man has no shame.

    ReplyDelete
  137. J Neo Marvin10:15 AM

    What would a Ramones song that actually expressed an authentic right wing sense of the world sound like?
    "Now I Wanna Eat Some Paste"?

    ReplyDelete
  138. BigHank5310:15 AM

    Howling at the Moon was explicitly for drug legalization. Sorta political.

    ReplyDelete
  139. J Neo Marvin10:16 AM

    "I wanna steal from the rich and give to the poor!" Dee Dee was such a Commie.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Kevin Robbins10:39 AM

    Donald's a misogynist troll from way back. I have a resolution not to blog about him. Nothing about comments, tho.

    ReplyDelete
  141. Of course, and "A Modest Proposal" was pro-babyphagy. Actually it's not even a matter of you not getting satire, it's a matter of you distorting Seeger's lyrics- here are the complete lyrics, you lying ass mofo:

    Remember when the AAAKilled a million hogs a day?
    Instead of hogs it's men today.
    Plow the fourth one under.

    [Chorus:]
    Plow under!
    Plow under!
    Plow under
    Ev'ry fourth American boy.

    They said our agricultural
    System was about to fall.
    So from Washington they sent a call.
    Plow the fourth one under.

    [Chorus]

    The price of cotton wouldn't rise,
    They said, "We've got to fertilize."
    So now on us they turn their eyes.
    Plow the fourth one under.

    [Chorus]

    They said our system wouldn't work
    Until we killed the surplus off.
    So now they look at us and say.
    Plow the fourth one under.

    [Chorus]

    Any ignorant mule does know
    Better than to step on a cotton row
    But there ain't no mules in Congress,
    So plow the fourth one under.

    [Chorus]

    Now the politicians rant
    A boy's no better than a cotton plant
    But we are here to say you can't
    Plow the fourth one under.

    [Final Chorus:]
    Plow under,
    Don't you...plow under
    Don't you...plow under
    Every fourth American boy.
    Now, don't you...plow under,
    Don't you...plow under
    Don't you...plow under
    Every fourth American boy




    You stop telling lies about the left, and we'll stop telling the truth about the right.

    ReplyDelete
  142. Nigel Tufnel11:14 AM

    That's generous, Krebs. I'd say 11, tops.

    ReplyDelete
  143. lawguy11:19 AM

    I'd forgotten that I'd seen Pete perform at the 50th anniversary of the N.L.G. Later in the evening a woman whose child was being watched in the nursery while we drank and partied came by and said that after he'd finished for the adults upstairs he went down and was still playing songs for the kids.

    ReplyDelete
  144. Yeah, he did and I don't actually have any problem if someone does want to contact his dean and point out that he is a vile person who injects angry sexist invective into random encounters. But the back and forth of it really doesn't matter--I'm pretty sure his dean and his college must be well aware of the sort of person he is since he makes no bones about it. I very much doubt that he is any more ashamed of his invective and his style in real life than he is online. I am sorry for his administration, actually, and his students because his comments here and at his own site read like someone who is rapidly decompensating and who could do with a little psychotherapy and maybe an involuntary committal before he injures himself or others.

    ReplyDelete
  145. Nigel Tufnel11:21 AM

    What ever happened to Sadly, No? It used to be one of my favorite blogs. There were three or four people who blogged regularly (including the linked Tintin) and were wonderful reads. Now there's only one blogger and while I enjoy some of the rants, they're way too long and repetitive.

    ReplyDelete
  146. Brain bleach. Stat.

    ReplyDelete
  147. She is kinda him in a bad wig...but no.
    Sycophant, but not sock.

    ReplyDelete
  148. XeckyGilchrist11:57 AM

    Isn't objecting to workplace harrassment a ... LIBERAL thing?

    ReplyDelete
  149. coozledad12:29 PM

    He's tenured at a surf school. He's got pottymouth with barnacles.


    And he'll hunt you down. He's Elan Machiavelli, and he's a trash talkin' mother-


    No one understands him like his Mad Jewess.

    ReplyDelete
  150. coozledad12:42 PM

    Emoticons; The flaming bag of dog shit for people too insipid for flaming bags of dog shit.

    ReplyDelete
  151. coozledad12:55 PM

    Kapo.

    ReplyDelete
  152. RogerAiles12:57 PM

    One shudders to imagine the Grammy tribute to Pete Seeger next January.

    ReplyDelete
  153. Mooser1:08 PM

    Very gracious Aimai. I can't say I would have been quite as compassionate.

    ReplyDelete
  154. Mooser1:11 PM

    "(It got stuck to my shoe on the way in to work this morning)."


    I guess it doesn't snow mucilage in Alaska. Nothing from the Constitution ever stuck to her.

    ReplyDelete
  155. Interesting. There is a Dennis who also trolls No More Mr. Nice Blog. Its rather sweet to think that in the entire world of infinite monkey trolls there are, actually, just a few assholes posting under different names.


    Anyway, you are sweet to reassure me.

    ReplyDelete
  156. Mooser1:13 PM

    "What is it with these people?"


    Things will change, now that ACA mandates coverage for mental-health issues.

    ReplyDelete
  157. Since "lacking insight" into one's condition is one of the problems some mental patients have unless the ACA mandates the actual care a whole lot of these lunatics will never get the help they need. There's a limit to how much coddling and caretaking even Obama's nanny state will do.

    ReplyDelete
  158. Mooser1:17 PM

    You know, when I learn a fancy new word like "impugned" and make sure it doesn't have any lubricious intimations, I can't wait to try it out. Maybe that's what happened with Donald with an e.

    ReplyDelete
  159. That story makes me proud to be a New Englander.

    ReplyDelete
  160. Mooser1:22 PM

    "Even if you had informed his employer of his little performance here, in
    what universe would that be harassment and the performance itself not?"



    New Braunfels, Texas, where Scientology is pursuing exactly that defense in the Rathbun case, with the assistance of retired-for-the-purpose First African-American Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Wallace Jefferson.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Mooser1:30 PM

    "And if you do make it your business I will hunt you down and we'll talk about it man to man, you evil motherf-ker."


    Best transcribed flatulence, ever!

    ReplyDelete
  162. Mooser1:30 PM

    Shut yo' mouf!

    ReplyDelete
  163. Mooser1:31 PM

    Donald with an e! DONALDE!

    ReplyDelete
  164. Mooser1:33 PM

    Don't you mean; "w-w-wo-wo-workplace"

    ReplyDelete
  165. Mooser1:36 PM

    Me? No, don't you know? Sasquatch ISREAL!!!!
    And I've heard he's strictly glat Kosher, so watch yourself, baby. A pupick should grown in your bellybutton.

    ReplyDelete
  166. mrstilton1:39 PM

    Nah. Just a kapo wannabe.

    ReplyDelete
  167. Mooser1:39 PM

    "As Bertie Wooster once said, These are remarks that verge upon the personal."


    Aimai, old girl, you are the bee's roller-skates.

    ReplyDelete
  168. Mooser1:40 PM

    And, as I think Alexander King said; "an ego on the half shell".

    ReplyDelete
  169. Jon Hendry1:43 PM

    You call that *work*?

    ReplyDelete
  170. Jon Hendry1:44 PM

    Are you the substitute gym teacher?

    ReplyDelete
  171. Jon Hendry1:46 PM

    Are we sure he isn't the Mad Jewess?

    ReplyDelete
  172. Mooser1:46 PM

    If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this blog, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a
    body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

    ReplyDelete
  173. That was all Wolcott. But thanks! I'm definitely saving that one up for some future contretemps.

    ReplyDelete
  174. Mooser1:50 PM

    , "you're a wannabe Communist..." (my bold)



    He not only brings the thrust home, he twists the knife too. This, whatever it is, is a formidable, nay!, an abominable adversary!

    ReplyDelete
  175. satch1:50 PM

    B4...thank you. Y'know... at least when Douglas shows up you know what you're going to get... a bunch of lame-ass schoolyard trash talk from an internet tough guy who couldn't beat a flatworm in an actual battle of wits. MichaelNewsham slithered in here in the guise of an ever-so-reasonable conservative who has "legitimate concerns" over something that he alleged that Seeger said after Newsham massively, dishonestly misrepresented it. Newsham and Douglas are equally bad.

    ReplyDelete
  176. Mooser1:53 PM

    Well, it's not as if a college or University would have a program or service to Google the names of staff at regular intervals. I mean, just to see if they're still alive or something.

    ReplyDelete
  177. Mooser1:56 PM

    "Are we sure he isn't the Mad Jewess?"
    Represent himself as female and non-Christian? Sort of a "stoop to conquer" thing?


    I mean, abandoning Christianity, isn't that sort of, well, Communist?

    ReplyDelete
  178. tigrismus2:02 PM

    So, the universe inside the heads of people whose grip on sanity seems a wee bit tenuous?

    ReplyDelete
  179. Mooser2:02 PM

    He'll have to drop the "Jewess" thing. They won't go for that.

    ReplyDelete
  180. Mooser2:03 PM

    Well, I must admit, the gender-bending makes you somewhat more interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  181. Jon Hendry2:06 PM

    Yeah, but, just imagine Donalde wearing a dimestore wig. Wouldn't it look something like the Mad Jewess' avatar?

    ReplyDelete
  182. Mooser2:35 PM

    "I see... So, people at work dont have breaks, eh?"
    Oh yes, most people at work are mandated breaks. But, (and this has been adjudicated many times) you are still on your employer's property, still covered, and yes, still "at work".
    That won't fly. Look it up

    ReplyDelete
  183. Mooser2:37 PM

    "threatened and harassed my workplace"


    You mean, reported your crass, and threatening behaviour? We are supposed to report people who make threats, and gosh, some of those threats might be 'terrorist'? What else could we do?

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  184. M. Krebs2:38 PM

    Well, FWIW I regret taking his bait. His whole purpose in life seems to be to provoke people who in his fevered mind are leftists and communists. So when you allow him provoke you, he wins really.

    ReplyDelete
  185. Mooser2:40 PM

    Well, I can hardly see where the person positing themselves as "The Mad Jewess" has the slightest respect for or connection to Judaism or Jewishness.
    Perhaps she is an Israeli?

    ReplyDelete
  186. Mooser2:41 PM

    Well, I hope he gets some sort of coverage. He may not know when he needs it, but in time, others will.

    ReplyDelete
  187. Mooser2:43 PM

    I stand on what I said, it's probably much more compassionate than I could be.

    ReplyDelete
  188. Mooser2:43 PM

    Oh never mind, I just fell off.

    ReplyDelete
  189. Mooser2:47 PM

    There's nothing tenuous about the twenty lawyers, including Mr. Wallace Jefferson, Scientology is devoting to this. Tenacious, maybe, but they are not letting go.
    The Judge, Waldrip by name, seems to be more than on to them.
    Anyway, the last click on the blog -roll (The Underground Bunker) will get you the entire story, and from a former colleague of Roy's, IIANM.

    ReplyDelete
  190. Its all I could muster so it will have to do pass as my best. I can't forbear the snark but, seriously, one does feel better taking the Seeger road than the low road.

    ReplyDelete
  191. Mooser2:58 PM

    "I'm definitely saving that one up for some future contretemps."


    It beats being non plussed!

    ReplyDelete
  192. M. Krebs3:54 PM

    Better tell LLCC than, because their online phone directory says you're an "Instructor."

    ReplyDelete
  193. kilgore trout4:04 PM

    There's a student newspaper at Long Beach Community College. I wonder if helping out some enterprising young journalist would constitute workplace harassment. You know, just wondering.

    ReplyDelete
  194. Kevin Robbins5:44 PM

    That would be the Frank Burns and Hot Lips of the Internet.

    ReplyDelete
  195. Kevin Robbins5:56 PM

    Amen

    ReplyDelete
  196. AmPowerBlog5:58 PM

    Roy: Do you have a commenter named Selwyn Harris? This person sent this blog post to my academic department. Also, is this the same Selwyn Harris who is a professor at Armstrong Atlantic University in Georgia. I'm gathering all the information needed for the legal record of your blog's workplace harassment at my place of employment Thanks.

    ReplyDelete