Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Stockholm (pop. 97) is a blink-and-you-miss-it settlement hemming the Mississippi as it widens to become Lake Pepin: no gas station, no convenience store, no ATM on thecornerbut an old-time hotel and dozens of specialty shops displaying locals arts and crafts and foodstuffs. A historical museum, even.

But all those storefronts were standing empty till the 80s. What gives?

The Buzz

Today, Stockholm is the crown jewel in the diadem of towns along the Great River Road, a.k.a. Hwy. 35 S, rollercoastering along the rivera highway the tripmeisters at Rand McNally rate as one of the Ten Most Scenic Drives in the nation. Stockholm has been transformed from a near-ghost town not so long ago into an artists colony, rich with painters, potters, weavers and those of other creative stripes, who live, work and sell their endeavors here. The itty-bitty village boasts spring and fall Art Tours plus a juried Art Fair in July drawing 8,000 people. Between those official art-forward gatherings, galleries and shops are open weekends May through October, and many keep more expanded hours.

What drew the new wave of immigrants? The most reliable guess is that, back when the arts movement first took hold in the 80s, land here was both cheap and beautiful. One artist ventured a studio, then others of the romantic, back to the land school, followed suit.

The Backstory

The town is bookended by two historic highway markers that capture layers of its early history. On the north, one pinpoints Maiden Rock, that limestone bluff towering directly above the highway, where a Sioux princess, forced to abandon her lover and marry another, leapt to her death. The southern marker commemorates the site of Fort St. Antoine of 1686, which staked claim by French explorers in the name of Louis XIV to all the land west of the Mississippi no matter how far. Well, the English thought otherwise and took control in 1783.

Fast-forward to 1851, when immigrants arrived from Karlskoga, Sweden, and founded a settlement they named for a beloved icon of their homeland. They farmed and they fished, just as in the land they came from. Here, where the Mississippi widens into Lake Pepin, they built a miniature town hall, post office, hotel and many of the shops and cottages that still form the community.

Cherishing that heritage today, the Swedish flag of blue and yellow flutters above many a doorway. Blossoms tumble from sky-blue flowerboxes, and blue bicycles glimmer from bike stands around town, beckoning visitors to hop on for a complimentary spin. Community flower gardens with inviting benches encourage lingering in the business districta fancy name for a single intersection, truth to tell. A shopkeeper, in what was once a hardware store, has witnessed the transformation. When I moved here 40 years ago, she says, there was not a thing. Other oldtimers, like the host at Great River B&B, gives credit to the Harbor View Caf in Pepin for drawing traffic down an otherwise deserted road. And once the first artist saw the cars whiz by, well, the rest is gorgeous history.

The Digs

That B&B occupies the oldest house in Stockholm, built by the towns founder in 1869, anchored by 20 acres of forest and pasturelanda diamond in the rough, recalls Leland Krebs of the homestead he took over in 1985; when farming became too laborious, he converted into a B&B.

Its the most beautifully suited-outand privateB&B Ive ever stayed in. And the only place Ive ever slept wheresafe and sounddoors are never locked. While the house has two guest roomsthe Calvin Coolidge and the Millard Fillmore (dont ask; they didnt sleep here), only one of the two is rented at a timethus, total privacy. The genial host checks guests in, inviting them to sample a cache of CDs and a wonderfully expansive book collection, then disappears until time to start the breakfast coffeeexcellent, by the way, from Great River Roasters in Pepinserved with juice, fruit and muffins warm from the oven: none of those four-course extravaganzas that land you back to bed.

The house is furnished in modern Swedish design (think the collectors originals that IKEA knocks off) accented by antiques, such as the ornately carved wooden bedstead in the Coolidge, a room spacious enough to accommodate two cozy armchairs before the fireplace, a writing desk, and books stacked in a tower higher than I could reach.

The second room contains two butter-yellow twin beds. Both capture the sunshine through many-paned windows set into deep walls; or retreat to the porch to catch the morning rays. Follow a path through the apple trees to the meadow above, where a bench invites lingering for contemplation, a place where deer and turkey wander. Freight trains rampaging through town hoot haunting warnings into the night.

Spring Street Inn, the only-slightly-gentrified occupant of the former Merchants Hotel from the 1880s, offers cozy rooms and a romantic sunken bird and butterfly garden.

The Eats

Bogus Creek Caf & Bakery occupies a tiny, antique farmhouse, but in nice weather everyone chooses an umbrella table on the patio, where the sound of trickling water makes the absence of Muzak a double blessing. Nearby Bogus Creek got its moniker, the story goes, when a counterfeiter, in fear of imminent raid by the law, tossed his fake coins into the stream.

Its proprietor was drawn, she explains, by the zeitgeist, a special feel about the town as a place people take their time and relax, where life is simple. And where the local talent is phenomenal.

No Wisconsin fish fry, she points out. Instead her creative menu segues from salmon cakes with poached eggs and fruit for breakfast (served all day), a sassy breakfast burrito, or Swedish pancakes heaped with lingonberries and whipped cream. Fresh breads and pastries to-go, too.Talk about one-stop gluttony! Stockholm Pie & General Store acts as an enabler for entire carloads of foodies, who come for the panoply of filled crustsbumbleberry to triple chocolate pecan, and stay for the candy counter and lode of specialty local foods.

If only she were open in the evening.

Fortunately, Gellys is. Gellys Pub & Eatery is the current occupant of a former Texaco station, and, as my server noted, the only place around here open seven days a week year-round. Heres where youll find that Friday fish fry, along with burgers and steaks. Outdoor patio, too. Expect occasional businessmen masquerading as Harley dudes ordering Miller Lite at the bar.

But what you must doeverybody does, so be prepared to wait for a coveted tableis head six miles downstream to Pepins Harbor View, since 1980 the cult foodie caf of the Mississippi. No fish fry here either, believe me: instead, seafood tends toward poached halibut, grilled opah, and my frequent choice, walleye, served with shrimp in a dill cream sauce along with wild rice, sugar snaps and cranberries. With portions on the mammoth side, its useless to say Save room for dessert, but do, anyway. My favorite (and everybodys) is the Georgia walnut pie, laced with more than a little bourbon from its neighbor state. The wine list alone is worth the drive. Theres a cheery din to the unassuming storefront, where you can spot first-timers by those little black dresses that have no business here. The bad news is, they do not take reservations, so grab a glass of vino from the bar and settle down outside to watch the trains streak by.

Shop and Gawk

Stores, branching one block in each direction of Stockholms main (okay: only) intersection, include establishments housing art, jewelry and home dcor treasures, ladies wear, gift and home accessories, Amish furniture, pottery and used books, as well as these prime venues:

Abode, the commodious go-to gallery for exceptional regional arts and crafts, showcases paintings, art photos of old Stockholm, textiles, woodenware, pottery, jewelry and fine books bound in Japanese silk, as well as chapbooks of local poetry.

What are you doing here? I ask co-owner Steve Groms.

His answer: We came camping every weekend and we hated to go back to the city every Sunday night. The place gets in your blood.

Out of the Blue Gallery concentrates on local art photography and prints, books on the region and cheeky gift items, while Clementine proffers live flowers and delectable antique furnishings sold in the towns former garage.

Palate stocks elite kitchenware and edibles, and offers cooking classes-cum-dinner parties, often led by Harbor Views chef. For more local yummies, check out the Good Apple, stocked with all sorts of apple products and themed kitchenware, as well as Wisconsin wine and cheese. Or travel two miles up the hill to the home orchard, featuring 50 varieties, to smell the blooms or pick you own in season.Ingebretsens, housed in a sweetly renovated hardware store of 1878, proffers all manner of fine Swedish crafts culled on shopping expeditions to the motherland, including knitwear, blown glass, Sami jewelry, embroidery, pottery in medieval designs and Christmas ornaments. No kitschy trolls, no Ole and Lena t-shirts

Stockholm Gardens stocks herbs, annuals, perennials and trees, as well as garden pots and ornaments. Their inviting community garden in front is their best advertisement.

Move Those Muscles

Hike uphill on Spring Street to the towns old cemetery, where peonies and tall cedars guard gravestones with inscriptions like Carl Lind 1886-1906 and Johnson, Lars and Anna, 1886-1936 among the Helbergs, Nords and scores of other Swedish names.

Grab a blue bike to pedal to the Public Park fronting the river, with its long, concrete pier thrusting into the waves aside a sandy swimming beach, to watch the sailboats or the eagles (camping permitted). Or tour the back country roads known as Little Switzerland.

Stockholms annual Art Fair (this year: July 17) aside the river features 100 juried artists, food vendors and, of course, local music. Falls Art Tour offers self-guided tours to area artists studios. Pick up a map at any store in town.

For information:www.stockholmwisconsin.com

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Swedes Along the Mississippi - Lavender Magazine

Mobs gone wild are hardly new to the horror world; from Frankenstein (all of them) to A Nightmare on Elm Street (the franchises very DNA), bloodthirsty packs of everyday people who thinktheyre doing something good by chasing down potential baddies and stringing them up has long been part and parcel of the genre. In David Gordon Greens Halloween Kills, the second entry in his planned trilogy of films that follow John Carpenters seminal 1978 Halloween, mob mentality takes hold early on, and never quite loosens its grip.

Picking up immediately after the events of Greens 2018 Halloween, Halloween Kills follows Laurie Strode (returning franchise star Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and Karens teenage daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) as they grapple with the horrifying realization that, nope, Michael Myers isnotdead and is still hellbent on murdering them, as well as whoever else gets in his way, even random passerby on the street, anyone.

As word spreads that Michael is back, various residents of the traumatized town of Haddonfield, IL including past victims and the Strode faithful team up to find, maim, and kill the bad man. Of course, misinformation takes hold in the various factions, emotions run too high to see any sort of reason, and suddenly, its hard to differentiate between the murderer and the people who want to, well, murder him. The news might call Haddonfield deeply polarized, but Greer, who reprises her role in the film, sees it as representative of the broader state of the world. Its positively zeitgeist-y.

I dont think any artist can make a piece of art and, yes, Im calling our films art, without the zeitgeist being present in their brain, Greer said in a recent interview with IndieWire. So, youre a painter. Are you really not, when youre painting your painting, taking in what you heard on the street, taking in what you saw on the news, taking in what you read as an update, an alert on your phone? Thats impossible.

For Greer, one of the most exciting things about Greens films in particular are how prescient they prove to be when it comes to the concerns of the real world. As she noted, mob mentality took on an entirely different cast after the 2021 United States Capitol attack, and while Halloween Kills had already wrapped by then, the film itself provides a discomfiting window into that world.

We made the movie at the end of 2019, and it was supposed to come out in 2020, and we pushed because of the pandemic, she said. And then there was a riot on our nations capital! We didnt know that was happening when we made this movie about mob mentality and about what happens when you become a part of mob mentality. Its crazy that that was the case.

Greer also pointed to the similarly forward-thinking vibe of the 2018 Halloween, which finds Laurie traumatized not only by the attacks of her youth, but by a world that just cant quite understand why shes still so afraid of Michael Myers.

Its crazy that, in the first one, we accidentally made a movie about the MeToo movement, about a woman not being believed, Greer said. That was an accident, but I think its really beautiful that you can make a movie like this, you can make a genre film [like this]. Youre like, Oh, its a horror slasher movie, but it can be actually meaningful at the same time. Why not? And I think thats why people love it.

Ryan Green/Universal Pictures

And while the mob mentality angle may be one of the bluntest aspects of the film, it also allowed Greer to push more deeply into her character, who emerges as the voice of reason (and, hell, even empathy) in a world gone totally mad with Michael Myers bloodlust.

Greer said she was easily able to slip back into the events and emotion of the first film, which ended on a dramatic high note. Halloween Kills opens immediately after the conclusion of that film, with Laurie, Karen, and Allyson speeding away from Lauries burning home, which contains (what they believe to be) a dead Michael Myers. Being thrust back into that milieu helped guide her emotional state from the start.

What we saw at the end of the 2018 Halloween, going through that with my mom, with my daughter, the adrenaline that is created in a moment like that, if you imagine just physiologically, your adrenaline is starting to just drop and youre exhausted, Greer said. Youre scared. Youre tired. Lets be honest, Im probably injured in some way. My moms bleeding out. Im terrified. My daughters with me, but Im still so scared for her life. Its just natural that I would settle into that mama bear role and try to care for my family.

But by being so attuned to her familys survival in a post-Michael world again, at least as they see it Greer said actually helped widen Karens worldview. Indoing that, Im able to kind of look outside of whats happening a little bit better than just being inside of it, because my concerns are different, she said. My concerns are my mom and my daughter and less like, I dont even know that Michael has escaped.

Emotions aside, Greer admitted that there was one other thing that helped plunge her back into the madness of Halloween: donning the same Christmas sweater she wore during the last half of the first film. Just putting on that stupid sweater, I was like, Okay. And were back. All right,' she said with a laugh. It was still crusty with blood from the first one. It was disgusting.Smelled like all my sweat from the first one!

UniversalPictures releases Halloween Kills in theaters and streaming on Peacock on Friday, October 15.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow thesafety precautionsprovided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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Halloween Kills Star Judy Greer: People Love New Series Because of Its Zeitgeist-y Themes - IndieWire

From Mexico City to Paris and beyond, 1968 saw massive protests, political violence, the assertion of new values, and explosions of artistic expression that together challenged dominant structures, ideologies, and sensibilities amid the Cold War.

Even Ohio University would find itself closing amid riots in May of 1970.

But radical change in Chile, the southernmost country in the world, took a much less violent pathway, writes Dr. Patrick Barr-Melej in his newly published essay, A 68 Chileno? Politics, Culture, and the Zeitgeist of 68. Barr-Melej, professor of history and interim executive director of the Center for International Studies, explores the zeitgeist or spirit of 1968 in Chile as part of an edited volume of essays.

The political, social, and cultural history of Chile during Latin Americas long 1960s was bookended by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the military coup that ended Marxist president Salvador Allendes Chilean road to socialism in 1973.

This historical context provides Barr-Melej with an insightful point of access into the zeitgeist of 1968 in Chile. He maintains that many of the essential factors that contributed to 1968s transnationalism played out differently in Chile, where they were of lesser magnitude or simply did not unfold.

To illustrate, Barr-Melej looks at a university reform movement in 196768 that realized its immediate goals under a centrist Chilean government circumstances that were quite alien to student protesters in Mexico City or Paris. And although 1968 saw bouts of unrest and conflict in the streets of Santiago, Chile, often with radical youths pitted against police, such eruptions were small and brief, did not significantly impede the rhythms of life in the capital or elsewhere, and largely were outcroppings of ongoing debates and legislative struggles between political parties and blocs, he argues.

Barr-Melej notes in his essay that a vital factor shaping Chiles 1968 experience was the absence of a profound and perilous sense of impasse, which was a complex, contributing factor leading to 1968s explosiveness in Paris, Mexico City, and other contexts. This was the case in Chile notwithstanding deep frustration voiced by workers, various student and youth groups, and other constituencies, especially on the more radical (and radicalizing) left, regarding systemic elements of the countrys political culture and socioeconomic architecture.

With democratic and pluralistic qualities framing an electoral environment in which leftist political parties had participated earnestly for many decades, Chiles pre-1973 political culture afforded space, though highly contested space, for the rise and development of radical politics, including that of young people, Barr-Melej explained.

Since the 1930s, political democratization was interrupted in just a few instances, like the banning of the Communist Party from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Broadly speaking, Chiles political culture essentially had provided a mechanism a pressure valve, lets say that channeled postwar revolutionary energies into mainstream politics, and this was true until the early 1970s and the election of Allende. We dont see this in France or Mexico on the eve of 1968, for example, he said.

Barr-Melej's essay appears in Global 1968: Cultural Revolutions in Europe and Latin America (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), a collection edited by James McAdams (Notre Dame) and Anthony Monta (Holy Cross College) that features contributions by distinguished historians, filmmakers, musicologists, literary scholars, and novelists.

Barr-Melej teaches modern Latin American history, world history since 1750, the history of Mexico, historical research and writing, and graduate seminars.

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Barr-Melej examines Chile's path amid violent upheavals of the 'Global 1968' - Ohio University

Behold, the top 10 NBA teams in our 10th annual League Pass Rankings. Reminder: These are watchability scores, not power rankings!

We score teams, 1-10, in five categories:

ZEITGEIST: Do actual humans care about this team?

STAR/HIGHLIGHT POTENTIAL: Do you stick around games, at the expense of sleep and loved ones, because one player might do something spectacular?

STYLE: Are they tactically interesting?

LEAGUE PASS MINUTIA: Announcers, jerseys, court designs.

UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY: Coaches making funny faces, passive-aggressive teammates, frequent bloopers, sneaky irritants.

See teams 30-11 in ESPN's annual NBA League Rankings

Phoenix makes the most of the methodical Chris Paul experience. There is beauty in ruthless execution, and Phoenix added layers atop layers to its foundational pick-and-roll attack: flare screens, decoy movement, calculated drift cuts. It was elegant in an almost academic, formalist sense.

It just lacked the "holy crap!" factor. Phoenix is an average transition team, and it ranked 26th in dunks. The algorithm is torn between admiring the brazenness of Paul's foul-baiting and punishing his hubris.

Mikal Bridges added a pogo stick midranger, perhaps a sign that he has more scoring in him. Driving into Bridges is like floating into a black hole:

Cameron Payne jolts Phoenix into chaos gear. Jae Crowder salsa danced the Los Angeles Lakers right out of the playoffs -- embodying the hit-first bravado that drove Phoenix within two wins of the NBA title.

Deandre Ayton bought into everything, and the Suns have yet to extend him. With Suns governor Robert Sarver courtside, do we have potential for an awkward "pay me!" moment in the vein of Shaquille O'Neal screaming at the late Jerry Buss -- or a boozy Chandler Parsons shouting, "Max or nothing, motherf---er!" at Mark Cuban out of a cab?

Devin Booker's bag is bottomless. The array of shots he busted out scoring 82 points over Games 4 and 5 of the Finals was straight-up ridiculous: isolation fadeaways; lefty floaters; catch-and-shoot jumpers launched after flying around picks.

The "Valley" court is back with its gorgeous color gradient and shaded desert landscape:

Kevin Ray and Eddie Johnson are an elite broadcast duo. We all need more miked up Monty Williams in our lives.

This is about one thing: Zion Williamson, an unprecedented melding of size and speed, has played 85 games in two seasons -- leaving everyone wanting more.

(The algorithm is aware Williamson is recovering from foot surgery; it is wired to be optimistic.)

We have seen many Zions -- Point Zion, post-up Zion, screening Zion, fast-break Zion, center Zion. He has only scratched the surface of each archetype.

There is no defense to keep Williamson from the rim. A ridiculous 81% of his shots came at the basket, and he converted 70% of them. Large bodies bounce off of Williamson, even when he is airborne. It is a matter of time until Williamson shatters a blackboard or brings the whole damn stanchion down. He jumps three times for offensive rebounds in the span most humans might complete one jump.

The passing vision is there, but Williamson is frenetic -- prone to close-range fastballs and inaccurate kickouts. Reps will help; Williamson's pick-and-roll partnerships with Brandon Ingram, Jonas Valanciunas and Devonte' Graham each present dilemmas for defenses.

On defense, you wonder: Does Williamson care? Are his shoes made of cement? Is he tired already? New Orleans will go nowhere until they cobble together a good defense, and that's easier when everyone sees the franchise player giving a damn.

There's still something missing with Ingram -- some combination of playmaking and defense. Ingram finding that balance is as central to the Pels' future as anything but Williamson's health and desire to stay.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jaxson Hayes could break out as two-way players. (Hayes is a malevolent dunker hoisting 3s in preseason, Alexander-Walker a long-armed, audacious scorer.) Valanciunas grinding defenders to dust is one of the NBA's unheralded delights.

Gimme the hot sauce! (If you're too cool to appreciate Stacey King's catchphrases, we can't be friends.)

Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine should be a perfect match: the league's willingest hit-ahead passer bombing to the best open-court dunker since prime Vince Carter. Benny the Bull won't be able to control himself during his popcorn fiendings.

Melding the Ball/LaVine show with the, umm, more patient stylings of DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic will be an ongoing challenge for Team Floor-Raiser. DeRozan has shown -- including in the bubble with the San Antonio Spurs -- that he is adaptable to run-and-gun pace. Chicago needed another closer anyway; the crunch time burden on LaVine was too big -- even if he rose to it. More of LaVine off the ball -- spotting up for 3s and cutting for dunks -- is good for him and the Bulls.

2 Related

Vucevic can trail for 3s and toggle in the half-court between post-ups and ball screens, depending on matchups. DeRozan likes the midrange too, and it will take time for these four to master their steps and settle a hierarchy. Watching that discovery process will be catnip for X's and O's nerds.

Crafting a workable defense will be tougher. Patrick Williams is one of the league's most important players, given how few young guys acquired directly via Chicago's lottery picks and the Jimmy Butler trade remain on this roster -- and the picks Chicago now owes the Spurs and the Orlando Magic. (Coby White's long-term role is uncertain too.)

Williams is built for switchy defense, and his stop-on-a-dime midranger is pure silk -- launched so high, the ball drops through without generating much more than a ripple.

Derrick Jones Jr. is one of LaVine's only true dunking rivals. DeRozan is the king of high-fiving phantom teammates between free throws if no one approaches -- or while attempting technical foul shots. It's a subtle bit, and DeRozan is supercommitted.

Hypothesis: Billy Donovan is the least funny coach in the NBA.

Prediction: The crackdown on bogus fouls won't affect Trae Young as much critics hope. He's too good, too smart, and his habit of slowing down in traffic -- the gambit that often draws contact -- is a (mostly) legitimate basketball play designed to survey the defense or coax it into some false step. (Young jumping sideways is another story.)

Young ran more pick-and-rolls than anyone, but the repetitiveness did not detract from Atlanta's entertainment value. The Hawks ranked No. 2 in dunks, with oodles coming via Young's lobs to Clint Capela and John Collins. Capela usurped Collins as Young's primary screen setter, but Collins found ways to stay involved -- and channeled more energy into dirty work.

(Not enough was made of Collins dunking on Joel Embiid's head in Game 6 of the conference semifinals, and then showing up to the news conference after Atlanta's Game 7 win wearing a T-shirt showing that same dunk. That is even colder than Young shushing the New York Knicks crowd. You have to enjoy a team embracing villainy this hard.)

NBA teams have reported to training camp, and the 2021-22 season is set to tip off on Oct. 19.

Preseason power rankings Marks: Big questions for all 30 teams

Projected standings: East | West NBArank: 100-51 | 50-26 | 25-6 | 5-1

Young can see and make passes, including crosscourt slingshots with both hands, that are off-limits to most guys his size. Late last season, Young started getting off the ball earlier -- making easy reads, and letting his supporting cast cook.

Kevin Huerter is fearless, with cagey playmaking skills. De'Andre Hunter showed a burgeoning all-around game, and should become an all-court wrecker on defense; he went chest to chest with Julius Randle in the playoffs. Cam Reddish is itching to do more.

Bogdan Bogdanovic is a gunslinger coming for your throat. We haven't even mentioned Lou Williams or Danilo Gallinari (and his hair).

The broadcast is fun, the art pleasing. I wish the Hawks would bring back the stained glass-style court honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

With Jamal Murray, the Nuggets might have challenged for No. 1 after finishing second last season.

Nikola Jokic is the league's most entertaining player -- to these eyes -- but Murray hasn't gotten enough appreciation for his part in building the NBA's most sophisticated and indefensible two-man game. Each star can score against the league's tentpole pick-and-roll defenses: drop-back schemes and switching. Murray can solve both by heaving 3s or driving.

But it is in those in-between spaces where Murray and Jokic make high art. We know what Jokic is -- the greatest big man passer ever, and one of the most inventive passers of all time for any position -- but Murray brings guile to the dance. Murray freezes defenses with hesitation moves, and he is a master at taking one extra prodding dribble -- the bounce that draws Jokic's defender closer to Murray, unlocking an easy drop-off.

Jokic, though -- Jokic is the freaking show. He leaves you cackling like an idiot at least three times per game. These one-handed. rebound-into-outlet heaves are absurd:

He whips no-look passes where it's unclear when -- or even if -- he spotted his target:

In the post, he is a ground-bound tornado of twisting pivots and upfakes that get defenders leaping at ghosts. If he misses, no matter: Jokic volleyballs rebounds with either hand, from distances outside typical tip-in range.

There are nights when the game looks so casual for Jokic -- when mismatches down low are overwhelming, when the pictures come to him so early and so clearly -- that he seems to try high-wire passes just to entertain himself.

Michael Porter Jr. has one of the league's sweetest unreachable jumpers, and he'll expand his off-the-bounce game. Michael Malone gets a full season to experiment with Aaron Gordon's defense. Facundo Campazzo is a threat to nutmeg someone at all times, and he is one of the league's peskiest irritants.

The jerseys and courts are solid; the royal blue "Mile High" uniforms have been a nice addition.

The algorithm might be as overenthusiastic about the bouncy bugs as Eric Collins, Charlotte's charmingly bombastic play-by-play man, is in screaming about a LaMelo Ball long 2 as if Ball has discovered the cure for the coronavirus.

Charlotte was 33-39 last season with the league's seventh-worst point differential. If everything goes right, they probably top out around .500, and you know what, I don't care, because Ball is going to toss alley-oops to Miles Bridges, and Bridges is going to detonate and Michael Jordan will be grinning while wearing some hat that is a little bit funny if you are being honest with yourself.

Whew. Sorry.

The Hornets move the ball, and use superfun centerless lineups. Those groups ran really small last season with both Devonte' Graham and Terry Rozier, and Charlotte compensated by playing way more zone than anyone -- a nice strategic changeup.

The 2021-22 NBA season tips off in October with a pair of star-studded doubleheaders on ESPN.

Wednesday, Oct. 20Celtics at Knicks, 7:30 p.m. ETNuggets at Suns, 10 p.m. ET

Friday, Oct. 22Nets at 76ers, 7:30 p.m. ETSuns at Lakers, 10 p.m. ET

With Graham out and both Gordon Hayward and Kelly Oubre Jr. available, the Hornets have access to bigger and switchier small-ball groups. How about: Ball, Oubre, Hayward, Bridges, and P.J. Washington? Even Rozier -- a crunch time god last season -- has a 6-foot-8 wingspan.

James Borrego faces a testy decision: Either start games centerless, or use one of Hayward, Bridges, and Washington as sixth man. Bridges drained 40% from deep last season, even dabbling in pull-ups, and made huge strides as a playmaker. I can't wait to see how much more he has, especially on defense, and if Washington shows similar all-around growth.

Oubre is always flexing, doing pushups, and punching up in his trash talk. The honeycombed court and striped uniforms stand out, and strike the right balance between Charlotte's classic 1990s look and modern tastes.

The biggest question: How polished of a scorer can Ball become in the half court?

A full season of Klay Thompson might have pushed Golden State to No. 1 -- a perch they held over their dynastic apex. Alas, we don't know when Thompson will return, or how rusty he'll be.

What Stephen Curry and Draymond Green share is why we play and love team sports. It is the kind of unspoken chemistry you dream about finding one season, in one pickup game, for one damned day. It is what happens when two ultra-smart, ultra-skilled players with complementary strengths -- including the greatest shooter ever by a nontrivial margin -- bond for a decade. It is rare, rarer even today than it once was, and we should cherish it.

Curry is the league's premier highlight factory. A Curry hot streak from deep looks, sounds, feels like nothing else in sports history. Curry is always bobbing and weaving, a lurking danger that attracts panicked eyeballs at all times. He is one of most creative little guy paint finishers ever, with touch so gentle, the ball seems to melt into the backboard and drip down.

But Curry and Green working together elevate the two-man game to a higher plane. They outmaneuver defenses with such precision and speed, you barely notice what they have done -- how many decisions they crammed into two seconds, how many alternatives they sifted through, how far ahead they were of everyone else.

This play -- one of my favorite Curry-Green joints -- looks so simple, but it only emerges from years of shared problem-solving:

They call it the "hand-back," and they use it to wrong-foot blitzing defenses. Green has told me they barely discuss reads like this anymore; they just see them and make them.

Golden State last season ranked third in pace, second in passes, and first in dunks. Fun! They looked like themselves once they fell back on the familiar: starting Kevon Looney over James Wiseman, and playing more with Green at center.

They discovered Juan Toscano-Anderson fits their pass-and-cut style. They know Andre Iguodala does, and Iguodala's return scores nostalgia points. Every Iguodala appearance will remind of how it felt in 2015 and 2016 -- murmurs in the crowd, dread spreading across the opposing bench -- when he strode to the scorer's table: Enter the Death Lineup.

Jordan Poole is ready for his moment. New additions young and old bring intrigue.

The champs should play with new freedom after exorcising postseason demons and working toward the right mix of roles on offense for Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday, and Khris Middleton.

The regular season is a playoff-optimization lab now for Milwaukee. Last season's focus was diversifying the defense. This season is about honing a half-court offense that cratered for most of Milwaukee's second-round bloodbath against the Brooklyn Nets. A major subplot is Antetokounmpo carrying over the improvements he showed from the midrange: steadier footwork, jump hooks, floaters, more refined post moves.

As he becomes equal part fast-break marauder, one-on-one brute, and lob-catching screen setter, Antetokounmpo is chiseling his own player archetype -- transforming into a 6-foot-11 mix of skills we've never seen.

He is the force behind the league's most devastating transition attack, gobbling up huge chunks of space with each dribble -- and either dropping thunder at the rim, or kicking to one of Milwaukee's spot-up shooters. (Brook Lopez ambles into trailing 3s with the ease and familiarity of an old man plopping into a recliner.)

Donte DiVincenzo adds hoppy rebounding and canny pass-and-cut playmaking. Pat Connaughton is a superathlete. Thanasis Antetokounmpo is a bumper car playing his own hybrid of rugby and basketball. Whatever it is, you can't take your eyes off of it. Keep an eye on Jordan Nwora.

It is downright frightening when Holiday decides to put someone in jail -- to lock them up full court.

Marques Johnson is as good as it gets as an analyst; Steve Novak is tremendous too. I'm excited to hear Lisa Byington on play-by-play duties.

This is one of the best courts in the NBA:

This might be a case of anticipation outstripping reality: Thinking about how Russell Westbrook fits might be more interesting than watching the Lakers figure it out.

Regardless, the Westbrook fit is perhaps the biggest on-court question in the league -- the variable that will determine whether the Lakers can gut through the West and upend the East juggernauts. Every possession will offer clues: What is Westbrook doing when LeBron James has the ball? Is he cutting? Is he setting picks for James? Can he weaponize his rebounding without compromising L.A.'s transition defense? Will we ever catch James forgetting cameras are always on him, and rolling his eyes as Westbrook misses his 13th consecutive jumper?

We'll see how much Anthony Davis plays center, and how the Lakers manufacture points with Westbrook, James, Davis, and one of Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan on the floor. (Those lineups will inhale offensive rebounds.)

Westbrook will push the pace for a team that blitzed everyone in transition two seasons ago.

Freight train James still appears every game. Sometimes an opponent -- someone James considers beneath him -- draws it out by getting too physical or chirpy; James sighs and takes that victim to the weight room down low. Backpedaling defenders still have no shot when James accelerates into that bowling ball left-to-right spin; they bounce away, and he extends that right arm sideways for a hammer dunk.

The passing will always be there -- the crosscourt lasers, always released with defenders leaning the wrong way, always landing in the shooting pocket.

Twenty years later, James and Carmelo Anthony are finally teammates. The entire roster is like a reunion of your favorite TV cast from 10 years ago. Oh, hey, that's what Rajon Rondo looks like now?

Howard elbows people in the face and feigns astonishment at the resulting technical foul. Heat check Malik Monk is fun. Talen Horton-Tucker's surgery is a bummer; he looms as an important potential two-way wing.

The Lakers have the league's best court, and sleek jerseys. One quibble: I don't like the wide, black stripe running down their purple uniforms:

Kyrie Irving broke the algorithm. The supercomputer housed in my garage to compile these rankings exploded the moment on Tuesday when the Nets announced they were banishing Irving until he gets vaccinated.

The algorithm is divided. Does it punish the Nets for this fiasco, and deduct entertainment points for the absence of one of the NBA's great showmen -- coming off a 50/40/90 scorcher that was probably the best season of his career?

Or should it assume Irving will return, and that the NBA's grating franchise soap opera foists another unbearable yet irresistible melodrama onto the world?

The safest assumption is that we are living in a simulation. The second safest is Irving relents. The Nets topped these rankings before Tuesday's announcement, and we decided to leave them here.

If you can train your mind to ignore the noise -- and it's getting harder given the moral and public health issues underlying this latest round of Nets theater -- there is no denying the jaw-dropping spectacle of watching them play.

Alongside two co-stars, James Harden ditched the thudding isolations and became more of a point guard -- searching out passes earlier in the shot clock. Kevin Durant has long been happy to start possessions off the ball, working as connector or finisher.

Playing next to two stars conjured the best version of Irving: off-ball scoring menace who seizes the offense as secondary ball handler, or whenever it is convenient. Irving hit an absolutely outrageous 54% on pull-up 2s, and he revved Brooklyn's pace when he played as solo star.

Irving even began flashing into open spaces, triggering beautiful sequences of quick-hitting touch passes -- the kind of selfless, semi-egalitarian basketball you would not expect from a top-heavy team. (Having great shooters everywhere helps push the Nets to that style, since they have so much space within which to flit about.)

Of course, they can win ugly too. Harden might be the most efficient off-the-bounce isolation player ever. Durant reminded everyone during a majestic playoff run that he is maybe the greatest player today -- and one of the dozen greatest ever. Even without Irving, they are a scoring bonanza.

The supporting cast is loaded with characters. Blake Griffin can still dunk! Who knew? After last season's health scare, you have to be excited to watch LaMarcus Aldridge burrow into his office on the left block. Bruce Brown created a whole new position -- rover -- and James Johnson plays a similar screen-and-dive style. Jevon Carter defends every millimeter of the court as if his career rides on each possession. Patty Mills never stops moving; he will sprint his way into more open 3s than he imagined possible.

The minimalist, black-and-white jerseys and one-of-a-kind (in the NBA) gray court work -- both in pure style terms, and to set the Nets apart visually. The broadcast is the best in the league.

Link:

Lowe - Lakers? Warriors? Nets? Ranking the top 10 most fun NBA teams to watch this season - ESPN

Say what you will about our modern obsession with James Bond movies, but their timing often seems impeccable. This falls release of No Time to Die, the 25th official film in the series, is the perfect moment to ponder the weirdness that is the Bond villain tucked away in an impenetrable lair on a tropical island or an inaccessible Arctic mountain range, protected by (politically incorrect, often) goons and tinkering with a Doomsday Machine to destroy Planet Earth, usually for the most inscrutable of reasons.

If only the banality of evil in the real world was as interesting as the Hollywood brand. In 2021, the monster who is actually threatening Planet Earth with untimely demise is a Bond villain barely worthy of the title. His potential for a mountaintop lair in his home state of West Virginia has been flattened and stripped by a century of Big Coal, so his evil abode is instead a houseboat floating lazily in the Potomac River. His goon squad consists of oil company lobbyists and Morning Joe sycophants, and his only scar comes from repairing a sink aboard the Almost Heaven.

And yet make no mistake: West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has positioned himself to destroy the globe in a way that Auric Goldfinger, Ernst Starvo Blofeld, or Lyutsifer Safin could have only dreamed of. This Friday nights news dump that Manchin will exercise his veto power as the most conservative Democrat in the 50-50 Senate to kill the lynchpin of President Bidens climate change agenda $150 billion to help utilities transition into clean energy and away from dirty fossil fuels including coal, from which Manchin and his family have earned millions is a gut punch to the worlds environment. Manchins move means that the United States will limp into the looming Scotland climate summit without a credible plan to reduce greenhouse gases before global temperatures pass the tipping point.

[Without] a clean energy standard in the reconciliation package, Biden admin[istration] cannot meet pledge of 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2030, Penn State climatologist Michael E. Mann wrote on Twitter after the Manchin news leaked. And international climate negotiations begin to collapse. The droughts, floods, rising sea levels, mass migrations and human misery that would result from this failure triggered by a self-aggrandizing U.S. senators ego and massive greed will surely surpass any mad scientists doomsday device.

In one sense, the Manchin power play is the oldest story in American politics about the outsized power of money, greed and cynical ambition to kill progress, even if this time the stakes are a lot more cosmic than, say, Teapot Dome. But in another sense, the West Virginians obstruction felt like another downward leap in an American autumn of unrelenting disappointment turning into existential despair just an extreme example of a U.S. political system that is so badly broken and incapable of doing the right thing that frustrated voters are no longer sure who to blame, or, more importantly, what to do.

I know that as a newspaper columnist tasked with locating the national zeitgeist, Im having a hard time this weekend knowing where to channel my growing sense of angst and political fury. As horrific as that veteran Democrats cynicism protecting his personal coal investment, while gambling that anti-Biden demagoguery could get him reelected in a red state in 2024 may be, it wouldnt succeed without 50 Republican senators who are every bit as callous toward the planet theyre bequeathing to their grandchildren as is Manchin.

READ MORE: A broken America should build a monument to Joe Manchins massive ego | Will Bunch

And thats not even the scary thing about the Republican Party of October 2021. As many of us feared even as we celebrated The Former Guys solid defeat in November 2020, the GOP its delusional, conspiracy-fed base and the craven pols who follow their lead hasnt so much abandoned the personality cult of Trump but embraced it as a Lost Cause, and the cornerstone of a new American fascism built around a Big Lie.

That alarming reality hit a new low last week at a GOP rally in Virginia to boost base support for the partys fall gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, the archetype of the modern Republican who either distances himself or embraces Trump, depending upon whos in the room. Youngkin was wise not to attend this rally, at which Trump himself phoned in and the keynote speaker was Steve Bannon, the criminal and anti-democracy (bleep)-stirrer whose 11th-hour pardon from POTUS 45 has emboldened him to defy Congress about Jan. 6. But that wasnt the worst.

The worst came when the rally crowd cheered and swore allegiance to a flag they were told was carried into the peaceful protest (you know, the one where five people died) on Jan. 6. Theres actually no way of knowing if the flag was truly carried at the Capitol Hill insurrection or whether this is just another level of Trumpified lying, but the symbolism is terrifying to any student of fascist political movements.

In Germany in the 1920s and 30s, members of Adolf Hitlers Nazi Party venerated the so-called blood flag, or blutfahne, which bore the swastika emblem and was said to have been carried in Hitlers failed 1923 beer hall putsch in Munich, splayed with the blood of a party member who was killed in that failed coup attempt. Of course, the many who ridiculed the seemingly disgraced Hitler after 1923 were blind to the appeal and subsequent rise of a fascist lost cause.

As I and many others have feared, Jan. 6 has quickly become that beer-soaked lost cause for an American brand of fascism. You are seeing this when the insurrectionist flag is venerated, when Trump campaigns to turn the slain Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt into a fallen martyr of his movement, and when millions of Republicans now believe the Big Lie that Bidens 2020 election was fraudulent. You are seeing this, so why arent you doing more to stop it?

The fascist formula anger and even violence from middle-class citizens with a shared sense of victimization, exploited by vulture capitalists is on full display in our wrongly named off-year election of 2021, in which Republican hedge-fund billionaires are teaming with grievance-soaked parents who see books about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or even wearing a mask as a threat to white supremacy theyve branded as freedom, in a scheme to take over suburban school boards that has caught Democrats flat-footed.

As the United States seems determined to emulate the fall of Rome, its perhaps ironic that our political problems are layered like deadly volcanic ash. Right now, the forces of progress cant even join the battle against right-wing authoritarianism because too much hope has been vested in a Democratic Party that is weighed down by the corruption of Manchin (or the even-harder-to-fathom Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema) as well as unforced errors by Team Biden, like the botched branding of its middle-class rescue plan.

The Democratic Party is in no position to save the American Experiment. Only the American people can do that but it requires a sense of urgency that is disappointingly lacking in this moment of blood flags and real-life Bond villains. Theres a sense that too many of the voters who marched or rallied at airport terminals in 2017, knocked on doors in 2018 and put Biden over the top in 2020 have gone back to brunch in 2021. That may be just a media narrative (although the sense of ennui is palpable in the Biden-voting Philly suburb where I live) well know for sure after Nov. 2.

If youre as concerned about the fate of U.S. democracy as I am, there are some things you can do after youve drained your last mimosa.

Vote in November like its a presidential year. The puppet masters of conservative politics like the Pennsylvania hedge-fund guru Paul Martino, spending $500,000 or more on a right-wing takeover of school boards in my home state are betting heavily on Democratic apathy to plant the seeds for a grassroots takeover of the body politic. And its easy to skip off-year elections weve all done it but in 2021 democracy depends on breaking that habit.

Did you protest in 2017-20? Get back out there! Democratic voters should have learned their lesson in the Barack Obama years voting is only one step toward saving democracy. Despite a disgraceful lack of coverage in the media, hundreds of young activists were in the streets of D.C. this past week, getting arrested for climate change like theres no tomorrow, since there may not be one. More people should be out marching again, to let both parties know that people want voting rights, a healthy planet, and economic fairness.

Treat Manchins corruption the way you want Republicans to treat Trumps corruption. Its a common refrain on the left that too many GOPers put up with Trumps utter lack of ethics because they wanted the perks, like corporate tax cuts and right-wing judges, that come with a Republican president. Yet many Democrats are too terrified to criticize Manchin because of fear his seat might fall to a Republican. Thats baloney the long-term rewards of being ethical, and letting the chips in West Virginia fall where they may, are far greater.

Look, I understand why so many voters were praying for a return to normalcy when Biden took the oath of office in January. But that was an unrealistic hope, and its taken just nine months to see why. If you want a normal, healthy democracy the one where you can enjoy a loaded omelette without thinking about politics youre going to have to fight for it. For the American Experiment and for an endangered planet, this is no time to die.

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A Jan. 6 blood flag and a Bond villain in the Senate its no time to go back to brunch | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer

For fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the original double-album of Jesus Christ Superstar known as "the Brown Album" composed when he was 23, is a cultural touchstone and an iconic, pioneering example of the rock opera genre. The latest touring production of the musical that came out of the album, celebrating the show's 50th anniversary, is a stripped-down version of the show with the band on stage that is akin to a concert production though there are modern costumes and a lot of kinetic dancing by the disciples.

The moment in time that produced both Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, both of which opened in 1971 in New York, is sort of hard for modern musical theater fans to transport themselves back to. The hippie era was on the wane, guitar rock music had just entered its golden age, and Hair had just reinvented the musical for a new generation four years earlier. And somehow bridging the free love 60s with Christianity and modern music was part of the zeitgeist at least in America, because as the New York Times recalls this week, the original concept album for Jesus Christ Superstar "fizzled" in England upon its release, but it went gangbusters in the U.S., hitting number one on the Billboard chart in February 1971.

The latest production comes via Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London, where it was the first West End production to open during the pandemic in 2020. This production, directed with fresh eyes and energy by Regent's Park Artistic Director Timothy Sheader, also played at Lyric Opera in Chicago in 2018.

It opened at the Golden Gate Theatre on Wednesday, the first show to open, besides Hamilton, under the auspices of the now Ambassador Theatre Group-owned BroadwaySF.

The extremely talented Aaron LaVigne and James T. Justis take on the roles of Jesus and Judas, respectively and in some ways, Judas is the central figure in the story, being the narrator of this telling of Jesus's last seven days before his death by crucifixion. (Controversially, Webber and lyricist Tim Rice decided to end their story before the resurrection, because this take ends with Judas's death by suicide.) Justis has a powerful and terrific voice, and he harmonizes well with LaVigne's stratospheric rock-tenor chops.

The followers and disciples of Jesus are an intense bunch in this production, in near constant motion and performing some decidedly cult-like choreography by Drew McOnie. The costumes, by Tom Scutt, have Jesus and the gang all in sneakers and gray knit hoodie ensembles with fashionably baggy pants to match, and along with the dancing it brings an appropriately devotional and fawning aura to the group. These are not just well trained chorus kids going through the motions, these are some madly driven worshipers with a brand new kind of charismatic leader.

As Mary Magdalene, Jenna Rubaii does an excellent job doting on and duetting with LaVigne, and her voice is also great. And Paul Louis Lessard makes an excellent, scene-stealing turn as Herod in one of the final scenes.

The decision to run the show straight through without intermission is a wise one, keeping this production's hard-driving momentum uninterrupted. And Scutt's simple but effective set deserves mention as well two steel-frame structures, that could either be read as buildings under construction or recently bombed, frame the stage and provide second-story platforms for the band, with a couple of trees in between and a cross-shaped platform lying prone just off of center stage.

How much you enjoy this show will likely hinge on how much you already know or love the music, and/or how much you believe that Jesus's final days are fitting subject matter for musical theater. Personally, I find most rock opera sort of grating, and with the exception of the "hits" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Superstar" and "I Don't Know How to Love Him," this is a score full of a lot of electric guitar frippery and dirge-y, unpleasant melodies and recitative. But this is a show with plenty of fans who'd strongly disagree with that sentiment, and for them, it should come as a delight and a well-staged celebration of the original concept album also, a firm step away from the critically panned original Broadway production.

If nothing else, it is a marvel of movement and classic rock, and the performers never let up.

'Jesus Christ Superstar' runs through November 7 at the Golden Gate Theatre. Find tickets here.

Top image: Photo by Matthew Murphy

Original post:

'Jesus Christ Superstar' In Its 50th Anniversary Tour Is a Brash and Unrelenting Take on the Rock Opera - SFist

In 1974, it was clear, maybeJesus died for somebodys sins but notNew Yorks the city was falling into some sort of adrenalised comic book dystopia. Andy Warhols factory had stepped one toke over the line, and the prelapsarian dream that blossomed from the flowerbed of the sixties was now a ruinous relic like a long-forgotten civilisation that the History Channel will say was built by aliens and abandoned centuries from now.

The spirit of the age was gritty tumult and grimy turmoil. Hippy flower power was an old ideal that had been paved over and buried under brutalist architecture. While opiates andChines Rocksreplaced opulent excesses, the only priceless spiritual commodity that the zeitgeist had to offer was poverty.

This feverish despair that had been forecast in a thousand bad acid trips from the decade earlier reflected the disheartening failure of the technological fix to bring about post-war progression. The sprawl of concrete, commercialism and internal decay sunk New Yorks lowly denizens into a plashy mire of crime and punishment.

However, punk gloriously clawed its way out of the darkened depths of degeneracy and never even brushed itself clean after it clambered into a sauntering snarl. Joey Ramone was the bowl cut Frankenstein monster that the cultural New York cocktail shaker had poured out as an emblem of thedisintegration of humanityafter a fair glug ofThe Velvet Underground and The New York Dollshad been slung in there.

The place they were serving this most-vile concoction was none other than The CBGB: The spiritual home of seventies artistic heathenry.From here a cultural wave akin to a beer-sodden leather-clad Italian Renaissance occurred where the notion of art as an elitist medium was bludgeoned into submission by kids who had something to say.

Sadly, the show was over and the cultural mecca became a clothes shop when Patti Smith played the final performance there on this day in 2006. Thus, were celebrating the mammoth impact of the scene, by ranking the best albums produced in its heyday. The rules are: The records had to be released between 1975 and 1978 and there can only be one per artist. Just imagine this level of quality in three short years!

I didnt have to be here you know. I didnt have to show up here. With my best financial holdings, I couldve been basking in the sun in Florida, this is just a hobby for me. Nothing you hear, a hobby! And so begins the ironic mantra of punk rock. This wasnt a hobby and the kids certainly had nowhere else to be, but boy were they going to make the most of the circumstances that had befallen them.

Released in 1975,Go Girl Crazy!Is undoubtedly one of the very first progenitors of punk. All the tenets are in place early humour runs rife, the raucous scintillating guitar leads of Ross The Boss Funichello could knock the socks off of Gandhi, and the playfulness of youth is frothing at the mouth. If this is the tenth best, then you know were in for one hell of a list!

One of the curious things about the development of pop culture is that it became so adept at defining itself that by the time of punk all of the iconographies fell into place in an instant. Without hearing the record itself, you just know whereYoung, Loud and Snottyby Dead Boys comes from.

The record was released in 1977 and pushed punk on towards heavier tones, with production that sounds like a wasp trapped in a can of cider and having a whale of a time in there. Befittingly that same suffused underground explosion is amplified even further in Hey Little Girl which was actually recorded live in the CBGB itself. What a bunch of rotters!

Such was the punk scene at the time, having only one album in this per artist is a rule that comes with an asterisk. At the time, bands were swapping members around like a spliff in downtown Kingston. It seems like youd wake up on a strangers sofa and then later that night youd be on stage with them.

With Johnny Thunders, Walter Lure, Billy Rath and Jerry Nolan all listed personnel and Richard Hell floating somewhere in the welter,L.A.M.Fis a tricky album to pin down. And there is an element of that elusive nature in its sound.

Record mostly in Essex, London as punk switched shores, the record is reminiscent of the best sort of hangover when you wake up still drunk from the night before and ward of the threat with a blunderbuss of action and night-before-introspection.

In August 1969,Alan Vega and Martin Rev witnessed The Stoogesand life would never be the same for them again. As Vega himself once said: It was when I saw Iggy Pop, thats what did it for me. That changed my life pretty much.

With thatSuicide were formed and they would capture the hearts of many in the budding CBGB New York boom. The bands mantra was a million miles away from those of a decade ago: I always said I was never gonna be an entertainer. Suicide was never supposed to be about entertainment.

If any testimony was needed to define the bands assertion that they were not entertainers then a ten-minute eerie hellscape that describes the tale of a young factory working father driven to delusion by destitution should do the trick.Like mad scientists depicting political depravity, Suicide sampled the DNA of William S. Burroughs, tapped into the cinematic scope ofTaxi Driverand handed the sickly creation over toDavid Cronenberg to direct.With that, the full gestalt of New York culture was dragged into punk.

In 1975, Richard Hell left Television. Fuck em. They were illuminating the future of music, becoming a fixture in the heart of New Yorks art scene, and having demos produced by none other than Brian Eno, but whats the point if they cant see the merit in Hell penned songs like Blank Generation. For a man who has lived lying down then what is one more flop to the canvas.

From that laidback spot in the gutter, Hell soon thrashed out his own tune andBlank Generationperfectly captures the sound. He is a poet who somehow has his head in the sweet clouds and clogs in six feet of stinking subterranean dirt at all times. Alongside this is a swirling and evolving soundscape that rumbles on likea Bayou Tapestry of Punk. Were certainly heading towards the high-end records now!

Punk was the Pandoras Box of music. Once it was opened, it was never going back in, and as it burst into brilliance it immediately scuttled off into a myriad magical direction. Blondie blended it with pop with aplomb and in the process helped to spawn a crest of new wave bands thereafter.

Punk had produced some amazing songs up until this point and indeed so had Blondie, but now, withParallel Lines, the genre had recognisable singles to point to. Tracks like Heart of Glass and One Way Or Another stood out like sore cocks at orgy amid the scene as the rushing moment of punk met with a pause of refinement. However, rather than tempering its cutting edge, it simply made the party a bit more flippy floppy.And boy did they look good!

Everynow and then music needs somebody to come along, grab it by the lapels and rattle it about like a pinball in-play during an earthquake. Even within the Promethean maelstrom of punk, the art school ways of Talking Heads somehow landed like a cold splash of water to the face of anyone with their finger firmly to the pulse.

Talking Heads didnt exactly blast the industry like a power hose though. David Byrne and the band more sort of moseyed up to the music industry, introduced themselves as an intergalactic presence, walked it hand-in-hand to the dancefloor and showed it how to make Flippy Floppy. As bassist Tina Weymouth once said, When Talking Heads started, we called ourselves Thinking Mans Dance Music.

They had acerbic intelligence to add to punks wit, an eye for where culture was headed and an unbelievable array of tunes to boot. This was the record that added a twist of lemon to the movement: Fun had come to town.

The timeless appeal of the Ramones was best summed up by the British punk poet, John Cooper Clarke, who wrote in the Ramones fanzine,Sniffin Glue, the following pithy piece of punk proclaiming prose: In late 1975, I read an article on the Ramones, a four-man gang from Queens. Much was made of their snotty asocial stage manner and the speed and brevity of their songs. [] I bought the LP. The Ramones were and are an enthusiasm of mine. They understood that it was better to have clever lyrics about moronic subjects than the other way round.

This raucous songwriting style of thehalf Afghan hound, half-mad scientist crossbreed Joey Ramoneand carefree vantage would soon waft over from the States to England, where the Sex Pistols picked up the scent. At their first riotous gig, a Frenchman in attendance reportedly heckled Steve Jones by yelling: You cant play! to which Steve Jones replied: SO WHAT!. The rest, as they say, is ancient history and a lot of it was crafted in the Ramones image.

This album might have only shifted around 5,000 copies in its first year, but since then its made one hell of an impact and turned the Ramones into legends.Everything about their debut record is now iconic; the cover image, taken by punks foremost photographer Roberta Bayley for only $125; the trashy sound recorded in seven days on a meagre budget of $6,400; even the snarling quickfire songwriting. Everything about the album is the quintessence of punk as we know it.

Punk, by definition, cant be pinned on a single person; it crawled from the plashy depths that rock and roll landed in after the prelapsarian slip of the 60s and snarled up like a straggly dirge to that loss of innocence. It came clad in drainpipe trousers and copious leather, and it needed a nurturing hand.

Patti Smith was that nurturing hand. And Patti Smith is nothing if not grandiose. The opening stanza to her memoir concludes, men cannot judge it, for art sings of God and ultimately belongs to him, and the first lyric she ever put forward to the world in the opening rap to her 1975 debut album,Horses,was Jesus died for somebodys sins, but not mine.

In her words she speaks to a higher level, one that both belongs to, and is of art. It is also one that transcends the punk boundaries of piss, spit and platitudes and relishes in the need for freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are.

The Godmother of Punk has always been about what happens next in an ever-evolving career, and it is with this finger to the pulse attitude and passion for self-expression that Patti Smith saved rock n roll.In short, punk made guitars fun again Horses was central not only to that but also ensuring it had a crash helmet on to protect its cerebral backbone as it went hurtling into the future.Anyone who ever said poetry was boring ought to listen and weep.

As the brisking wind that The New York Dolls had stirred into motion quickly started pulling up trees and forming some mad new craze called punk, Patti Smith was working as a journalist. At one point, she would trundle along to see a band called Television at some little-known clubslowly gaining traction called CBGB.

As a signifier of the arty intent of the band performing that night, a wall of televisions would be stacked behind them, each displaying different channels, except for one, tastefully off-centre that showed something akin to David Lynch-esque CCTV footage of the CBGB itself.

Patti Smiths piece would be titled: Television: Escapees from Heaven. And one of the most proto-punk statements within the piece reads: Confused sexual energy makes young guys so desirable; their careless way of dressing; their strange way of walking; filled with so much longing. Just relentlessly adolescent. Bearing in mind this at a time when they only had the New York Dolls and the Ramones for company, this youthful spirit proudly exhibited by Television was pretty much the Promethean punk force.

Every wondrous element of the movement is wrung out of the canvas of Marque Moon, to such an extent that you could drop a ten-tonne bomb into the spinning guizer of the vinyl and never hear it hit the bottom. There are some critics out there who miss the point of the CBGB scene and think the bands were making a movement, not music.Marquee Moontowers over such vacuous remarks as an edifice of unbridled creativity.

I remember when I first heard that is a rare sentence in music, but the showering half notes of the title track is a celestial sonic rain you are unlikely to forget.The depth to the album does not necessarily reside in the lyrics, subject matters, or any profound innovation; it lingers in the obfuscated sonic reaches of energy and atmosphere. The closest you can come is to say that it sounds like a band seizing the zeitgeist through a dreamy oracle distance in some weird spiritual sense like punk alchemists.

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From Patti Smith to Blondie: The 10 greatest albums of the CBGB punk movement - Far Out Magazine

In 2011, voters in Mississippi were given the opportunity to amend their state constitution to provide all of the constitutional rights that you and I haveor at least are supposed to haveto a fertilized egg.

And Mississippians resoundingly said no. But it wasnt just abortion advocates who opposed the ballot initiative. National Right to Life opposed it, as did Americans United for Life. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the states Episcopal and Methodist church leadership also refused to support it.

It was a crushing blow to the so-called personhood movement, which suffered repeated humiliating losses during the 2010s. Voters in North Dakota rebuffed the personhood movements advances, as did voters in Coloradotwice.

The personhood advocates retreated with their tail between their legs. The will just wasnt there.

But its ten years later, and the will of the people doesnt mean much anymore. Conservatives are in the midst of a power grab, and something as minor as the will of the peopleas democracy itselfis not going to stop them from imposing their rules of Christian theocracy and forcing the rest of us to live by them.

And personhood? Well, personhood is Christian evangelicals holy grail.

A Supreme Court ruling in Mississippis favor in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization wont end the fight for the anti-abortion movement. It will galvanize it. Disparate wings of the anti-abortion movement that have clashed in the past over the efficacy of pushing for personhood will come together. Republican-controlled states will rush to amend their constitutions to reflect the fetuss new status as a person, while anti-choice advocates push Congress for federal personhood legislation.

Because ending abortion is not enough.

If you thought the fight to protect Roe v. Wade was bad? The fight to ensure that women and pregnant people in this country dont have to share human and constitutional rights with a fertilized egg will be worse.

They want fertilized eggs, embryos, and blastocysts to have full constitutional rights under the 14th Amendmentthe right to due process, the right to equal protection, the right to lifeeven at the expense of the person whose body is sustaining fetal life.

That means anything that interferes with a fertilized egg making its way to the uterus and implantingalong with anything that interferes with that developing pregnancywould be classified as killing a person, and potentially as murder.

Someone suffering from infertility who, as is often the case during in vitro fertilization (IVF), does not implant every fertilized egg could be brought up on charges. A pregnant person who suffers a miscarriage could expect a visit from the cops to determine whether the miscarriage was accidental.

Any contraceptives that prevent, or even potentially prevent, a fertilized eggpardon me, a personfrom implanting into the uterus would be banned.

That this has grave consequences for abortion rights is a gross understatement. If you thought the fight to protect Roe v. Wade was bad? The fight to ensure that women and pregnant people in this country dont have to share human and constitutional rights with a fertilized egg will be worse. Because the end result isnt just forced pregnancy and unsafe abortion care. Its total control over women and other people capable of reproducing.

Thats always been the anti-choice movements goal, which is why they wont stop if the Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi Gestational Age Act, the 15-week abortion ban at issue in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health.

Exactly one week after the Supreme Courts decision in Roe v. Wade, the first federal personhood amendmentthe Human Life Amendmentwas introduced by Rep. Larry Hogan Sr. For the next 40 years, personhood amendments would be introduced and would fail. Anti-choice politicians would try to slip personhood language in unrelated legislation. (In 2012, Rand Paul threatened to block a bill to reauthorize funding to the National Flood Insurance Program unless a personhood amendment was attached to it.) Ultimately, those efforts would fail as well.

Meanwhile at the state level, personhood activists within the anti-abortion movement found themselves fighting an uphill battle alone. While they were in sync when it came to ending legal abortion, the movement was split on what tactic to deploy.

Personhood activists insisted that ending legal abortion required declaring that life begins at conception and that fertilized eggs deserved full constitutional protection. The rest of the anti-choice movement preferred a less controversial approachattack abortion around the edges and reduce abortion by restricting access. It would be death by a thousand cuts.

This incremental approach became the dominant strategy. After decades of brutal and violent attacks on abortion providers, accompanied by a pervasive narrative that women who get abortions are baby killers, a dramatic shift occurred in the way that the anti-abortion activists talked about abortion.

The cries about baby killers and murderers abated for a while as anti-choice advocates turned their attention toward crafting an image of caring abolitionists concerned about the harm that abortion caused women. Women werent baby killers. Rather, they were being coerced into abortion by providers who were falsely painted as motivated by profit. (One thing that remained from the tactics of the 1980s: attacking abortion providers and making them unsafe with wild claims about justifiable homicide.)

The real challenge for pro-lifers in 2009 is to effectively address the assumption that abortion is good for women.

Thats what Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel for Americans United for Life, said in an article published by CBS News in 2009. AULs model anti-choice legislation would go on to be a big force in the avalanche of abortion restrictions that came pouring out of statehouses across the country during the rise of the Tea Party in the Obama administration.

Screaming at women that they were baby killers wasnt working, so anti-abortion activists began to couch anti-abortion activism in woman-protective terms and promoted legislation that would purportedly protect women.

The flood of state abortion restrictions in the early 2010s marked this rhetorical shift and reflected the anti-abortion movements decision to focus on womens health and safety. Anti-abortion advocates keened about women being coerced into abortion, and invented medical conditions they claimed post-abortive women had suffered, including the ludicrous claim that women were being traumatized by the sound of vacuum cleaners after their abortions.

In addition, biased informed consent laws forced doctors to lie to patients about, among other things, an increased risk of breast cancer or an inability to bond with subsequent children, and to read scripts impressing upon the patient that theyre terminating the life of a whole separate unique living human being (as one law in South Dakota required), just to impress upon the hapless pregnant person that abortion is an abrogation of their maternal duties. Unwanted ultrasounds and heartbeat listening sessions were forced upon patients because hapless pregnant women simply needed to see and hear the little dot on the sonogram in order to tap into the well of maternal instinct that evangelicals believe resides inside every woman.

And then there were the regulations aimed at providers. Those were ostensibly about health and safety too. Requirements that clinics spend millions of dollars to retrofit their facilities to act as outpatient hospitalseven clinics that only provide medication abortion. States forced doctors to get admitting privileges at local hospitalseven though abortion is safer than childbirth and, on the rare occasion that a complication does occur, an ambulance will take the patient to a hospital nearest to their home, which, thanks to the legislators who enact these restrictions, may be hundreds of miles away from the clinic.

Womens health and safety. Thats what politicians repeatedly claimed their goal was when it countedin the legislation, in hearings, and in court. But in the media, they crowed about how successful these restrictions were at closing clinics.

The Supreme Court ended the womens health and safety charade in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, the case challenging Texas HB 2, sweeping legislation that Texas Republicans admitted was intended to close clinics.

In Whole Womans Health, the Court said states could no longer pass laws willy-nilly and claim that they protect the health and safety of pregnant people. The burdens of any restriction would have to be weighed against benefits the restriction conferred. The Court rejected Texas claim that its admitting privileges law was in place to protect women, finding that, in practice, the law hadnt done anything of the kind.

In one of her shorter concurrencesclocking in at two pagesRuth Bader Ginsburg said, When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety. Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws like H. B. 2 that do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion, cannot survive judicial inspection.

Whole Womans Health effectively put a nail in the we have to protect women from abortion strategy, which means the anti-choice movement is coalescing around the we have to protect the fetus strategy. That strategy could take many forms. Anti-choice activists may push for federal personhood legislation. They may push for an amendment to the Constitution establishing personhood. They may take a stab at both simultaneously.

Its certainly on their radar.

During a Newsweek podcast appearance with Rewire News Groups Executive Editor Jessica Mason Pieklo, anti-abortion leader Lila Rose laid the anti-choice movements cards on the table:

Theres no reason that we should treat children at the moment of birth different than children before birth. They are still human beings. Human life startsthe science is clear when human life beginsit begins at the moment of fertilization: sperm, egg fusion. You have a unique, individual human being and they deserve legal protection, just like anybody else. Thats not just a general argument for human rights; its based on our own Constitution. The 14th Amendment says that all people should have equal protection under the law and that no state should deprive anyone of their right to life without due process.

Theyve got momentum, theyve got power, and theyve got a Supreme Court stacked with justices just waiting to back them up.

And this time, theyre not particularly concerned about protecting women. They cant possibly be. Conferring legal rights to eggs turns every miscarriage into a potential criminal investigation. It also raises awkward questions about whose rights matter more when pitted against each otherthe fertilized egg or the person carrying it.

Enshrining fetal personhood into law will prevent millions of people suffering from infertility from being able to have children. And it will prevent millions of people who rely on certain forms of contraception from using them.

And while this may not be the most critical issue, it does raise the question: Can a pregnant person drive in the HOV lane?

The point is, fetal personhood will lead to chaos. And its that chaos that led to the myriad defeats the personhood movement suffered in the early 2010s. But its a new decade with a new cultural zeitgeist. The protect women drumbeat is silent, and increasingly the claim to care about womens well-being has given way to the rhetoric of the early days of the anti-choice movement: Abortion is murder and anyone participating in it deserves to be punished. They dont care anymore if a pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Gone are the concerns about the safety and well-being of women. Some Republican lawmakers have outright called for people who get abortions to be put to death.

Now its fetus ber alles. Its the fetus that deserves a chance at life. The pregnant person? They already screwed up by getting pregnant. Better luck next time.

The fight to keep personhood at bay will be tough, but its not unwinnable. Advocates will be fighting a united anti-choice movement with one goal in mind, to be sure. But fetal personhood has severe consequences outside of the abortion context; the anti-choice movement may not be able to convince enough people that fetal personhood even makes sense.

But that doesnt mean theyre not going to try.

The anti-choice movement may have been splintered in its approach to gutting Roe v. Wade in the lead-up to Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health, but after that decision comes down, the movements approach to ending abortion entirelyor trying to anywaywill be unified. And that should make every abortion rights advocate nervous.

See more here:

What's Next After the Supreme Court Reverses 'Roe'? Attack of the Egg People #ABLC - Rewire.News

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz has a strong gab game. He could show you an old Ford Pinto and convince you that it would ride like a Tesla. And you might even buy it: his pitch and the junky car.

Coach Drink stays updated on the cultural zeitgeist, knowing that it will play well on social media. And his social-media game is up there with Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss) among SEC head coaches.

This aint Ted Lasso, Drinkwitz said, explaining his motivational tactics in preparing his squad for the North Texas game.

Well done, Coach.

Drinkwitz understands branding. He can sell himself, and that helps him sell his program. He has the media eating out of his palm like cats after a snack. He has an appealing sense of humor, with just the right amount of self deprecation. Hes a gung-ho and effective recruiter. He has the right political touch with the Missouri administration. His energy abounds. Hes a family man, which plays well in this state. I like him. The complete package is there.

Well, almost.

Gotta win some football games. Always important to remember that part. As the coach said, this aint Ted Lasso.

The challenge of winning football games in the SEC depends on a lot of things, with recruiting at the top of the list. But a head coach must also hire good assistants, and coach up those assistance, and make sure that they do whats necessary to raise the standards and the performance.

Drinkwitz already and unfortunately had made a major screwup by hiring Steve Wilks as defensive coordinator. And Coach Eli compounded the mistake by overpaying Wilks to take the gig. Wilks is an NFL coach, with a sliver of college-football experience (if that) and seems baffled by the mysterious ways of modern college-offense styles, schemes and tactics.

Missouri has a bottom-five FBS defense, ranking near the lowest depths in scoring defense, total defense, rushing defense, and a bunch of other indicators. The Tigers have been plundered for 30 touchdowns in six games. Last Saturday a harmless North Texas squad came into CoMo and put up 35 points and 493 yards. But because we like Coach Drink, multiple game reviews mentioned the improvement and the progress of the Mizzou defensive line. Well, if you say so.

Ive lost some enthusiasm for Coach Drink but havent risked breaking an ankle by hopping off the bandwagon. I want to believe in this glib, relentless, and looney-tunes (in a good way) coach. And as I fan, Ill stick with it. But the disaster of the Wilks hiring has punctured my patience.

Its just that and many of you know this better than I do it aint easy being a Missouri football fan. The Tigers have had their very good seasons here and there but then it all slows down the usual drain after a while. And that cycle makes it difficult to smile, to believe, to keep the hope.

And because of the program and the history that Drinkwitz inherited, his honeymoon may be shorter than normal even if thats unfair. Its just the reality of pledging loyalty to a program that almost always lets you down. I say that with regret, not anger.

In 2013 and 2014, Gary Pinkel coached Mizzou to consecutive SEC East titles. The 2013 team was one half of football away from defeating Auburn and lining up for a spot in the national championship game. Mizzou went down hard in the second half of the SEC Championship poof! but still ended the season as the No. 5 team in the AP rankings. The following season ended with another loss in the SEC Championship game (to Alabama) and the No. 14 ranking nationally.

These were happy times. It didnt mean Pinkel was Nick Saban, or that MU was Alabama. But in the context of the maddening Missouri football experience, the 2013 and 2014 seasons were sweet and satisfying.

Pinkel went 15-4 vs. winning FBS teams over the two years including a 3-4 mark against ranked teams. But this wasnt the start of something big, something lasting. Coach Pinkel retired after 2015, putting his heart and energy into halting the life-threatening cancer that attacked him.

Mizzou soon took its usual place.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Missouri is 6-34 in games vs. winning FBS teams, and 1-16 against ranked teams. It hasnt been much fun. MU has kicked the blood-donor teams around, and done fine (if not perfect) against lightweights and other lesser foes. But you want to see your team hang tough against the better teams not even the super teams, but the winning teams. And Mizzou continues to come up short in these tests.

I think weve overreacted to Drinkwitz at both ends of the spectrum.

His 5-5 season against an All-SEC schedule in 2020 created buzz, and excitement, and enthusiasm for seeing Coach Drink as the coach who would change everything. He would raise the program and keep it there. The worry? Well, we have to make sure that he stays at Mizzou. Cant let him get aways. Call the money people! Give him the contract extension, ASAP! And make him rich, rich, rich! Give him everything he needs!

That was then.

But the dispiriting early flops this season with the horrific defense and underwhelming offense has us wondering if Coach Drink is just another hot shot that will fizzle out. Have we misjudged him? Were we fooled by a solid season that likely was distorted by pandemic-related circumstances? Did we fall for his charm offensive?

If we overreacted to the early success, which raised expectations, then we should probably lean on that to avoid overreacting to the early 2021 record that includes a 2-3 mark against FBS teams, including a 0-3 bust against winning FBS opponents.

In his one-plus seasons at Mizzou, Drinkwitz and the Tigers are 0-6 vs. winning FBS teams, 0-4 vs. ranked opponents, and 5-8 against Power 5 sides.

Coach has a lot of work to do, and we knew that when Missouri hired him. The reality is here, and were falling down the steps again. Time to climb back up. Time to stay up. This is what Missouri fans do.

And we can deal with it as long as Coach can handle it, and do something about it, and fix it. And that probably means owning a mistake, and eating a lot of salary, and replacing Wilks as defensive coordinator unless, of course, that area evolves and improves enough to stop an offense and lower anxiety.

If the defensive collapse remains in its present state with overrun MU defenders heaped on the ground after another huge gain by an opponent then the blame will shift away from Wilks. The blame will be dumped entirely on Drinkwitz. And it wont be as much fun as a Gatorade bath.

Coach Drinkwitz has some promising recruiting classes on the way. But thats down the road. We have to wait. On the road right now is Texas A&M, heading to Columbia for Saturdays game after shocking Alabama in the upset of the season.

In other SEC outposts, theyd be calling Paul Finebaum to rile the masses as part of the movement to lead a movement to chase the coach out of town and try the next guy.

Joe Moorhead go two seasons at Mississippi State, enraged Starkville by winning only 14 of 26 games, and was driven to the edge of town and told to leave and never come back.

Ed Orgeron you led LSU to the national championship in 2019, but we dont live in the past, so its time to go! get Dan Mullen youre overrated, and have a 2-7 record vs. ranked teams over the last two-plus seasons. Florida cant win the big one, and we aint putting up with it!

Missouris young head coach isnt in danger of losing his job dont be silly but this is a good time for him and his team to make a stand, and turn the tone of the conversation. And no matter what happens Saturday, well probably overreact to it.

Thats Mizzou football, baby. Remain calm if you can. But it aint easy.

Thanks for reading

Bernie

Bernie invites you to listen to his opinionated sports-talk show on 590-AM The Fan, KFNS. It airs Monday through Thursday from 3-6 p.m. and Friday from 4-6 p.m. You can listen by streaming online or by downloading the Bernie Show podcast at 590thefan.com the 590 app works great and is available in your preferred app store.

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Follow Bernie on Twitter @miklasz

Bernie Miklasz

For the last 35 years Bernie Miklasz has entertained, enlightened, and connected with generations of St. Louis sports fans.

While best known for his voice as the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch for 26 years, Bernie has also written for The Athletic, Dallas Morning News and Baltimore News American. Bernie has hosted radio shows in St. Louis, Dallas, Baltimore and Washington D.C.

Bernie, his wife Kirsten and their cats reside in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood of St. Louis.

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Bernie On Missouri Football: Coach Eli Drinkwitz, Hype, Hope, Impatience, And Overreaction. - Scoopswithdannymac.com - Scoops with Danny Mac

During the final month of 2020, weeks after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for the American presidency, many elements of the right-wing movement in the United States were focused on contesting the election result calling for audits, supporting protests, and fomenting a coup attempt. The powerful corporate-backed bill mill American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC), though, was focused on something else.

In December, ALEC brought together state legislators from 20 states, corporate representatives, and conservative activists for a virtual workshop entitled Against Critical Theorys Onslaught. The goal, as the title suggests, was to urge lawmakers to ban the teaching of critical race theory a decades-old academic field of study that interrogates the social construction of race and institutionalized racism, and which in recent years has turned into a catch-all for any progressive social studies education.

This was hardly ALECs first foray into legislation that curtails speech deeply critical of a state and its society. Several years earlier, ALEC met with U.S. legislators urging them to enact laws that would effectively ban the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement the nonviolent, Palestinian-led campaign to end global complicity in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights under international law. Such anti-BDS legislation, civil rights advocates have warned, threaten to directly infringe on Americans constitutional right to free speech generating the same repressive effect as other bills promoted by ALEC.

For many activists, organizers, and academics in the Palestine solidarity movement, this years uproar in the United States over critical race theory, and the accompanying efforts to ban it from being taught in schools, feels very familiar. Over the past decade, and particularly during Trumps presidency, pro-Israel organizations and politicians have sought to redefine antisemitism to include certain criticism of Israel by using the workingdefinition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances (IHRA), in an attempt to silence such views in classrooms and on college campuses across the country.

While they do not necessarily share the same roots, the movements to ban these critical perspectives from U.S. education resemble each other in myriad ways, sharing an array of financial backers, legislative tactics, and political motives to quash legitimate criticism of the racist and colonial practices of increasingly embattled states.

Floridas Historic Capitol and Florida State Capitol, Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida, August 31, 2013. (Michael Rivera/CC-SA-3.0)

For many Jewish Americans and their best-funded, longstanding institutions, the attacks on critical race theory present them with a conundrum: while many oppose the bans on the theory, some are simultaneously supporting the crackdowns on speech critical of Israel.

One thing I feel pretty strongly about is that the right wing has used Palestine and the Palestinian solidarity movement as a test balloon for tactics that they use more broadly against progressive issues, said Tallie Ben-Daniel, director of special projects with Jewish Voice for Peace. This is one of the ways that this is happening.

Republicans have used critical race theory as a tool to harness the kind of energy and anger that fueled their political revival during the early years of Barack Obamas presidency. Indeed, veteran Republican operatives seem to believe that the furor over the academic field is a goldmine.

In May, for example, Politico reported that Trump was teaming up with former Congressman Newt Gingrich to craft a new Contract with America to run on for the Republican Party in 2022. It should be positive, Gingrich said of the hypothetical contract. School choice, teaching American history for real, abolishing the 1619 Project, eliminating critical race theory and what the Texas legislature is doing. We should say, Bring it on.

Republican-controlled state legislatures have gotten the message. As of early September, 27 states have introduced legislation or taken steps through other avenues to curtail discussions of race and gender-related topics in classrooms. Twelve of those states have already enacted bans, including those led by presidential hopefuls like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.

The language in a number of these critical race theory bills is astonishingly vague. In one case, a bill targets the teaching of what it simply describes as divisive concepts, leaving educators unsure about what they can and cannot teach while giving states the ability to expand the definitions as they see fit.

The consequences of the critical race theory craze thus far, however, have been anything but vague. School board meetings across the country have turned into conflict zones, featuring mainly white parents screaming about the perils of critical race theory and COVID-19 safety guidelines. As school board members resign due to the meetings hostile climate, Republican groups are also investing to ensure that they win the newly-vacated seats.

Protesters seen in support of the Tucson Unified School Districts Mexican-American studies program, March 11, 2013. (Arizona Community Press/CC-BY-SA-4.0)

Legacy American-Jewish organizations, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which enthusiastically support defining certain criticism of Israel as antisemitic, have not been so bullish on the bans on critical race theory. In June, the ADL published an article basing the anti-critical race theory movement in virulently antisemitic white nationalism, arguing that the debate is being used to propagate the myth that the white race is under attack.

Yet some of these same pro-Israel organizations have also battled advocates of a more inclusive American history education. In California last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an ethnic studies bill on the grounds that it was insufficiently balanced and inclusive of all communities after a proposed ethnic studies model curriculum did not include content on Jews amid other concerns. Newsom credited the opposition of pro-Israel groups as decisive in his decision.

Teresa Montao, professor of Chicano and Chicana studies at California State Northridge University, was a member of the group that wrote the model ethnic studies curriculum for the state last year. The hypocrisy of pro-Israel groups supporting ethnic studies without the inclusion of course content on Palestine, for instance, is a contradiction I couldnt live with, she said.

I think groups like the ADL and others that have some history in the multicultural movement today theyre being much more exposed for what their real intentions are, Montao said. You cant say youre about equity if youre not going to question race and racism and colonialism.

The ADL declined a request for an interview for this story.

Though it remains to be seen how many of these bans on critical race theory will function in practice, experts have warned that the parameters of the legislation could severely complicate how Jewish history including the Holocaust is taught in schools.

Holocaust Museum, Washington DC, August 2, 2015. (Karen/CC 2.0.)

Some already believe there is cause for alarm. At a meeting of the Missouri state legislature in August, a member of the states Holocaust Education and Awareness Commission asked representatives whether a bill that would ban the teaching of critical race theory would mean that teachers could not, for instance, tell students that Nazis systematically targeted Jews.Republican Rep. Ed Lewis replied, in part, You wouldnt want me to say, Well, youre inherently a racist or a[n] antisemite because youre a German. That is kind of the implication of what critical race theory would do if we were to apply that to the Holocaust and its history.

Aside from specific concerns about Holocaust education, an anti-critical race theory, anti-ethnic studies approach to education would, in many ways, upend how Jews have long conceptualized and taught their history more broadly.

There is something fascinating about the Jewish opposition to critical race theory, because Jews teach history like that, said Shaul Magid, professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University. Theyre always teaching it from the perspective of the victim because thats how they see themselves in the world. And then suddenly another group does it, and implicates the Jew on the other side [as perpetrator], and its like, Hey, thats not good.

As the BDS movement gained momentum following the 2014 Gaza War and the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, pro-Israel forces worked to counter the movement, as well as mounting public criticism of the occupation, by broadening the definition of antisemitism to include speech critical of Israel.

In 2016, IHRA adopted a working definition that characterized a range of criticism of Israel as antisemitic. That definition has since been adopted by more than 30 countries, including the United States.

In parallel, American states began moving en masse to deter and penalize support for BDS, characterizing the nonviolent protest movement as antisemitic. Thirty-five states have passed anti-BDS legislation since 2015, with wide-ranging consequences for educators, activists, and pro-Palestinian organizations.

Protesting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, New York, February 3, 2019. (Gili Getz)

Trump, who received millions in campaign backing from pro-Israel individuals and organizations, added to this effort in late 2019, when he issued an executive order to penalize colleges and universities for failing to take action to combat antisemitism using the IHRA definition.

A group of scholars released an alternative definition in the spring, called the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, to counter the IHRA definition. But while the document was cheered by a number of academics and left-leaning U.S. Jewish groups, organizations like the ADL and the American Jewish Committee have opposed it, and the State Department has declined to adopt it.

For Magid, the conflict over antisemitism definitions is a red herring. This so-called debate over antisemitism between the IHRA document and the Jerusalem document, its not really a debate about antisemitism, said Magid. Its really just a debate about Israel under the guise of a debate about antisemitism Antisemitism is not really whats at stake here.

What is at stake, Magid continued, is hegemonic U.S. support for Israel, especially at a time when young Americans are becoming increasingly critical of the occupation. Laws targeting anti-Israel speech are a way for Jews to criminalize critique, he said. Thats kind of what its doing, and then once you do that, you can slowly extend and expand what critique fits into that. And that is clearly a response to fear.

The logic behind both the bans on Israel speech and critical race theory functions in similar ways: equating critiques of nation-states with criticism of individual students in classrooms.

These videos of parents being, like, My child is being harmed by this person saying [white people] are racist, to me, feels very similar to [the notion that] by talking about Israeli apartheid, or the wall, or settlements, you are creating a hostile climate for Jewish students on your campus, said JVPs Ben-Daniel.

That logic is not the only area of overlap. Both movements have reshaped the definitions of existing terms on racism and antisemitism, and used them to introduce legislation that severely restricts speech threatening to the political right. Moreover, both movements are receiving financial backing from a number of the same organizations and funders.

Protest against ALEC by the Occupy movement and other groups, St. Paul, Minnesota, March 13, 2012. (Fibonacci Blue/CC BY 2.0)

ALEC has long been involved in pushing legislators to oppose the BDS movement and suppress pro-Palestine speech on college campuses under the guise of antisemitism. In 2018, The Guardian reported that ALEC had brought state lawmakers together in Texas to discuss legislation on antisemitism that would encompass criticism of Israel; shortly thereafter, the state of Florida passed a law banning antisemitism in public schools based on the IHRA definition.

The organization has been similarly active in the fight against critical race theory. After its virtual workshop last December, a number of the state legislators it hosted went home to boost anti-critical race theory bills in 2021.

ALEC is not the only right-wing group straddling both movements. As far back as 2015, the Koch brothers, the libertarian business magnates, were part of a small group that invested in excess of $300 million in the effort to silenc[e] dissent and solidarity with Palestine. This year, organizations with ties to the Koch network have published an onslaught of articles on critical race theory, helping to fuel the ensuing moral panic.

There is further overlap in major donors and leadership between a number of right-wing think tanks in the United States and right-wing think tanks in Israel, including the Heartland Institute, the Tikvah Fund, and the Kohelet Forum, many of which have pushed for laws cracking down on anti-Israel speech, critical race theory, or both.

It is perhaps no coincidence that bans targeting speech on Israel preceded bans on critical race theory. [Palestine] is the testing ground, said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. Its both physically the testing ground and laboratory for weaponry, surveillance, and technology, but its also a testing ground ideologically around whats possible in terms of a right-wing agenda here in the United States.

According to Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Israel whether its backers intend it or not is often used as a wedge issue to make reactionary policy palatable to liberals and progressives. Once reactionary policies designed to help Israel are passed, they are often expanded upon to other fields. Friedman pointed to legislation in states like Texas that targets private businesses for discrimination against the gun, oil, and gas industries, which are based in part on anti-BDS legislation. These Israel-related bills, she said, are the tip of the spear to destroying free speech.

The Senate Chamber in the Texas State Capitol, Austin, Texas. (Wally Gobetz/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Battles over the ideological content of U.S. education are not new, and Palestine has not always been so prominent in them. But both Friedman and Magid said that the impetus for the new bans on antisemitism and critical race theory is a growing sense that public opinion is turning against both the Israeli and American national projects.

The anti-BDS laws [are] clearly a response to fear, Magid said. And critical race theory and the Jewish response to critical race theory is also a response to fear.

It is little coincidence that efforts in recent years to target Israeli settlements through labeling, bans, and boycotts in the United States and in Europe sparked a rash of anti-BDS legislation. Similarly, the racial justice uprising that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last summer ignited a backlash against a national reckoning with the content and purpose of U.S. history education.

For folks who have not been super down with more progressive rethinking of U.S. history [critical race theory] was something they could basically ignore, Friedman said. But there is a zeitgeist right now around this, and as that zeitgeist has more energy, there is a need to not just ignore [the theory] and marshal it, but to demean it and possibly kill it.

The trajectory is striking to many activists and educators who are interested in teaching the history of Israel and Palestine in a more critical light. They recognize that to teach honestly about Israeli land theft, militarization, and occupation is to necessarily implicate the United States and vice versa.

Clearly, said AROCs Kiswani, there is a broad spectrum of alignment as it relates to ensuring students dont have access to liberatory, anti-colonial, anti-racist education that students dont have access to tools that would allow them to have an analysis of race and power.

Read the rest here:

How anti-BDS laws paved the way for the assault on critical race theory - +972 Magazine