GLENN GREENWALD: Virtually every Fox News/right-wing-talk-radio controversy relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity — plundering by Wall Street bankers, abetted by the government they own — and focusing instead on some manufactured menace from powerless racial and ethnic minorities: black people preventing them from voting (New Black Panthers), stealing their elections (ACORN), and treating them unequally (Shirley Sherrod and Eric Holder’s Justice Department); Muslims who want to conquer their country and celebrate over their Christian corpses (the Triumphalist Ground Zero Mosque); invading, marauding Latino armies coming to steal their property and rape […]
CINEMA: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (2008, directed by Jean-François Richet, 113 minutes, France) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC The first of a two-part robbing, shooting and killing jamboree, Mesrine: Killer Instinct is a dazzling vehicle for French superstar Vincent Cassel, Cassel burst into the scene in 1995 as the violent ghetto youth Vinz in the controversial La Haine and has shown himself to be surprisingly flexible in French productions and Hollywood films, appearing in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen and even providing a voice in Shrek. Like Bogart he has a face that can seem simultaneously handsome and homely and standing […]
HARRY SHEARER: The Big Uneasy
DAILY BEAST: “I was in London last fall when President Obama was paying his three-hour and 45-minute visit to New Orleans—slightly less time than it took to play the Super Bowl game,” Shearer tells me. “He referred to the flooding—in passing—as ‘a natural disaster.’ I just hit the roof. I went, ‘OK, blogs and radio and all the other things I’ve been doing clearly aren’t enough. I know what the next step is.’ And it was this.” “This” is The Big Uneasy, Shearer’s powerful documentary about the real culprit in the disaster that befell New Orleans five years ago—the Army […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Marah’s Dave Bielanko
BY JONATHAN VALANIA All you youngin’s are probably too new here to remember all this, but there was a time back around the turn of the century when Marah — a scrappy little roots-y, beer-lovin’ band of street-urchins from South Philly-by-way-of-Conshohocken — was being groomed to be the second coming of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band circa The Young, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle. Marah was always essentially the brothers Bielanko — Dave, the rakish, boozy street poet with the soulful rasp and the uncanny capacity to channel the heart of the common man and Serge, the […]
WATCH: Cartoonish Religious Bigotry Gets Animated
HUFFINGTON POST: The Taiwanese have done it again. Next Media Animation has released a CGI recreation of all the recent events surrounding the Park51 controversy and anti-Muslim incidents with immaculate detail. The video covers the heated confrontation between anti-Park51 protesters and a random African American construction worker. Then it moves on to the protests over a proposed mosque in Murfreesboro, TN and a Florida church’s plans to burn Korans to honor 9/11 victims. MORE
FRINGE PREVIEW: The Festival Bar
BY ARTHUR SHKOLNIK The Festival Bar, now in its third year, is an after-hours space which opens its doors for the duration of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. The former home of Club Egypt in Northern Liberties (Spring Garden and Delaware Ave.) has been revamped with eye-catching visual art and modern media installations in preparation for the 16-day, all-inclusive array of genre-spanning entertainment. The Festival Bar has become the verified hot spot for thousands of festival-goers seeking after-hours recreation, and during the week features a motley assortment of nightly cabaret, including but not limited to: live stage performances, […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
DAY OF THE DEAD: Police Find 72 Bodies Killed By A Drug Cartel On A Ranch Near The Border With Texas
DAILY MAIL: The bodies of 58 men and 14 women have been discovered in Mexico – the latest victims of the country’s brutal drugs war. Soldiers made the gruesome find in a raid on a remote ranch near the border with Texas. The victims are thought to have been executed by a rival gang in a turf war for control of the region and drug routes into the United States. The Golfo cartel and rivals Los Zetas, composed of elite soldiers who deserted the Mexican army, are former allies who fell out a few months ago. The massacre came to […]
THE WAGES OF FEARMONGERING: NYC Cabbie’s Throat Slashed By Fare For Being Muslim
ASSOCIATED PRESS: A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan was charged Wednesday with using a folding tool to slash the neck and face of a New York City taxi driver after the driver said he is Muslim. A criminal complaint alleged that Michael Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the victim, “Consider this a checkpoint,” before the brutal bias attack occurred Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan’s East Side. Police say Enright was drunk at the time. A judge ordered Enright, 21, held without bail on charges of attempted murder and assault as a hate […]
EARLY WORD: Night Of The Igguana
EDITOR’S NOTE: In honor of Iggy & The Stooges playing the House of Blues in Atlantic City on Friday, we have dug into the vaults to retrieve our coverage of the last time they came through town back in 2007. This includes a review of their Electric Factory concert and an in-depth interview with founding member/guitarist extraordinaire Ron Asheton, who sadly passed away in 2009. The current line-up includes Mike Watt on bass (filling in for deceased bassist Dave Alexander), Scott Asheton on drums, and guitarist James Williamson who first replaced Ron Asheton back in the early 70s for the […]
TOMORROW: Q&A w/ Marah’s Dave Bielanko
Love and hope and sex and dreams and mutiny and betrayal and cigarettes and alcohol and good hats — it’s all in there. The new album, Life’s A Problem, is really, really good but it’s well past last call. Of course, that’s when things always get, um, interesting. Marah plays tomorrow night at JB’s, look for a Q&A with the sole survivor tomorrow on a Phawker near you…
ROUGH JUSTICE: City Takes Down The Cupcake Lady
DAILY NEWS: For a year now, the Buttercream Cupcake Lady has happily trucked around Philadelphia, soothing the sweet teeth of her adoring public at locations she announces in advance through social networks – until yesterday. As soon as the Cupcake Lady pulled to a stop on Market Street near 33rd at high noon, “business-compliance” enforcers and Philadelphia police pounced, confiscating her fully loaded truck. “Three enforcement guys came out with badges blazing,” said Kate Carrara aka Cupcake Lady. “Scared the crap out of me. The three cops with them were looking at me like, ‘We can’t believe we’re doing this.’ […]
CEE LO: F*ck You!
Cee-Lo Green – Fuck You from GeOrGe Leoshko on Vimeo. For the benefit of those who live under rocks.