Category Archives: Broadway

The Director of HBO’s "All the Way" Talks LBJ, MLK, and What They Can Teach Today’s Pols

by GitaBuckner Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s an age-old question: how to balance principle and compromise. In All the Way, the new HBO film based on the play by Robert Schenkkan and directed by Jay Roach (Game Change, Recount, Trumbo, Austin Powers), the star attraction is Bryan Cranston’s masterful portrayal of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the year after JFK’s assassination, as LBJ lied, wheedled, and bullied his way to passing the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then won the presidential election of that year. Cranston’s transformation into a man brimming with brio and confidence and also profoundly burdened with anxiety, insecurity, and paranoia is one of the best cinematic depictions ever of an American president. (Move over, Daniel Day-Lewis). But the true beauty and power of the film is its engaging exploration of the inelegant (if not often ugly) nexus of politics and policy. In All the Way, Johnson is a pathological prevaricator who personally betrays his closest political allies (who happen to be southern Democrats and racists)—but it’s all for the greater good of ending segregation. And it works. But there’s a high political price: in the film’s telling, Johnson has doomed his party in the South. (Indeed, Richard Nixon would capture the White House four years later, partly due to his “Southern strategy” of exploiting white resentment and racism.) And, of course, on the other side of the ledger, Johnson’s conniving conduct sunk the nation deeper into the bloody tragedy of Vietnam—and the film notes how that mighty mistake overshadowed his significant accomplishments. Yet All the Way ultimately chronicles a moment when good was achieved—but by a greatly flawed man using dishonest means. That’s what makes the whole damn thing so fascinating.

I talked to Roach about how he turned Schenkkan’s much-acclaimed Broadway play into this gripping political morality tale, which premieres on the cable network on May 21.

Mother Jones: You’ve directed films about modern politics, as well as the Austin Powers movies. But more recently, you’ve gone back in time. You directed Trumbo and now All The Way. What drew you to the LBJ project?

Jay Roach: I saw Robert Schenkkan’s great play on Broadway, while Bryan and I were prepping for Trumbo. Steven Spielberg and HBO reached out to me to see if I wanted to direct the adaptation. I said yes immediately, then realized I was committing to back-to-back projects with Bryan without knowing if Trumbo was going to work out. Could have been awkward. Thank goodness, it wasn’t.

It’s always about story for me. I was drawn in by the incredible predicament LBJ finds himself in in November 1963. He’d wanted to be president his whole life, but after JFK’s assassination, LBJ becomes the “accidental president.” He knows he is perceived as the usurper. However, rather than just consolidate power to win the 1964 election, he chooses to pick up Kennedy’s agenda and immediately joins up with Dr. Martin Luther King and takes on one of the most controversial pieces of legislation he could have prioritized, the Civil Rights Act. In doing so, he lost the support of the South, which he thought he needed to get reelected. I think this proves how sincere he was about civil rights.

MJ: The film looks at politics at a time when segregation was legal and Southern Democrats on Capitol Hill were the obstructionists trying to block civil rights. What about this is relevant today?

JR: Because of the horrible history of Vietnam, most people forget how much was accomplished during LBJ’s term. He worked closely with Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders, and also with representatives and senators from both parties, to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That helped protect the rights of minorities and women, and it is still being used today to protect the rights of gay and transgender people. And then LBJ passed the Voting Rights act of 1965, re-enfranchising millions of Americans who had been frozen out of the democratic process. He also passed other crucial legislation that improved the quality of life for millions of Americans for generations: Medicare, Medicaid, and 60 separate pieces of legislation funding public education, including Head Start. He pushed through major funding bills for transportation, immigration reform, the environment, and the arts (which led to funding for PBS, NPR, and the American Film Institute).

It’s incredibly encouraging to remember that when we elect presidents and representatives who believe that government can work to improve the lives of citizens, we can actually accomplish much for Americans. In those early years, Johnson did put the country first—above party and above personal advancement—and he solved problems.

MJ: In the movie, Johnson is depicted as a man who could be full of confidence and simultaneously riddled with deep insecurity, paranoia, self-loathing, and anxiety. How did that affect his ability to be a leader? Did that make him a difficult character for Cranston to play?

JR: Johnson was an incredibly capable leader, but he was also deeply flawed. After JFK, he knew how he would be perceived—as the usurper from Texas, doomed to perpetual comparison to President Kennedy. And he was to some extent innately anxious, restless, insecure, even self-pitying. You can hear all that in the many phone calls recorded when he was in office. That was part of the attraction for Bryan in taking on this part. Complex characters are what every actor prefers. Directors, too. For both of us, this was an opportunity to tell a story that goes behind the history—to the psychology of the man, possibly even to the heart and soul of the man.

MJ: Johnson did whatever it took to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. He lied. He cut deals. He compromised. Are there any lessons here for President Barack Obama or other modern-day politicians?

JR: I can only hope the film becomes part of the conversation about what is needed for great leadership, what is required to solve problems for citizens and to raise us up as Americans. For LBJ and for Dr. King—and for the legislators from both sides that they worked with—compromise was not a dirty word. Those who remained inflexible— the segregationists—lost their battles. They were too dogmatic to keep up with history. I hope that for those people who continue to resist the full application of civil rights for every person in our country, this is a cautionary tale.

MJ: My teenage daughter saw the movie with me. Afterward, she asked, “Why does everyone today say John Kennedy was a great president and no one knows much about Johnson?” As you made this film, did you think that Johnson has been shortchanged in popular culture and public history? Might that because of Vietnam and because he essentially left the presidency under a cloud by withdrawing from the 1968 race?

JR: When we look back in time, it’s hard to see through the horrors of Vietnam, which were to some extent rightly pinned on LBJ, It’s tough to recognize and remember all of LBJ’s incredible accomplishments, all the hundreds of important pieces of legislation he was able to pass by working with both sides, throughout his administration. It didn’t help him, either, to be sandwiched between JFK and Nixon in the national timeline.

MJ: In All the Way, Cranston is physically transformed into LBJ. Was that necessary for the movie to succeed? You did not do the same with Anthony Mackie, who played Martin Luther King Jr. and who played him in what might be regarded as an understated fashion?

JR: I work to give every actor what he or she needs to fully interpret a historical character, to feel like the character when he or she walks out on the set. Bryan’s transformation worked for him, and it works beautifully for the story. But Anthony and I talked at great length, and we decided not to try to impersonate Dr. King. Instead, we wanted to channel the essence of the man, especially as he might have come across when he was hammering out political strategy in rooms with the other civil rights leaders. Dr. King is so iconic. We all know what a great speaker he was. And we present some of that, but we also learned, as we watched tapes of his interviews, that he was incredibly strong and calm and quietly powerful in rooms when he was out of the public eye and collaborating with others.

MJ: Bobby Kennedy is a looming presence in this movie, yet he does not appear as a character. What led you to keep him off-stage?

JR: In the play, Robert Schenkkan made the choice to keep Robert Kennedy off-stage to serve as a sort of exaggerated figure of fear for LBJ—a combination of real and imagined threat. (LBJ worried constantly that RFK would step in and run for president, eliminating Johnson’s ability to rise above being the “accidental president.” ) It was an expressionistic choice, but not a big reach. RFK remained attorney general after JFK’s assassination, but he was not that active in the civil rights fights. He was running for Senate, and LBJ helped him campaign, but that story wasn’t so relevant regarding the fight for civil rights.

MJ: You’ve now worked with Bryan Cranston on two projects. What can you tell us about him that fans of Breaking Bad and his films may not know?

JR: I’ve worked with Bryan in two very serious roles, but it turns out he’s an extremely funny man. Between takes while we were shooting All the Way, he would sometimes stay in character as LBJ. This was not for any “method acting” reasons, but so he could harass us all in hilariously aggressive ways, using LBJ’s larger than life “Texas Twists,” his Texas accent, and his pre-sexual-harassment-law political incorrectness. Throw in Bradley Whitford who plays the role of Sen. Hubert Humphrey doing a fantastic and fully inappropriate imitation of Bill Clinton, and Frank Langella who plays Sen. Richard Russell doing his Nixon, and you had a pretty funny Oval Office experience between takes. The Three Amigos of the presidency. They were walking around the set, talking about the pluses and minuses of secretly recording calls and conversations in the Oval Office.

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The Director of HBO’s "All the Way" Talks LBJ, MLK, and What They Can Teach Today’s Pols

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13 Cartoon Portraits of Legendary Blues Artists

by MarlaBuxton Posted on April 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Before I read the author’s note, there was something that confused me about William Stout’s great new book, Legends of the Blues, due out May 7 from Abrams ComicArts (with an intro by music journalist Ed Leimbacher). Where were Memphis Minnie, Mississippi John Hurt, and Reverend Gary Davis, three of my personal faves? How could he overlook them? Also, why did the artwork feel so familiar, yet so different from other stuff I’d seen from Stout—an acclaimed comics, fantasy, and pop-culture artist and illustrator whose work you’ve undoubtedly seen. And then it hit me: Robert Crumb! This, as it turned out, was the answer to both questions.

Way back when, cartoonist Crumb, a blues and old-time music freak who has drawn his share of artists and album art (you can view some of them here along with our Crumb interview), created a series of 36 Heroes of the Blues trading cards. They included, among others, Memphis Minnie and John Hurt; Stout, an avid blues fan, had loved Crumb’s cards and didn’t want to replicate them. But the others were fair game. Rhino Records founder Richard Foos, a friend of Stout’s, ended up licensing Crumb’s portraits for a series of greatest hits CDs for Shout! Factory. And since Crumb had moved on to other stuff, Foos approached Stout to produce some additional ones in a style similar to Crumb’s.

That’s how it started. But after his assignment was complete, Stout kept it up. He was hooked. While recovering from cancer treatments, he cranked them out, imagining that he would produce a bunch of new trading-card sets. In the end, Denis Kitchen, another friend (and the guy who commissioned Crumb’s original cards) suggested that Stout make them into a book instead.

Legends… profiles a whopping 100 blues artists—many of them you’ll recognize and many you won’t. It’s a must for blues fans or even dabblers—although Stout cautions that purists might be upset by his inclusion of crossover artists. Hey, whatever. The format is simple: Each spread contains the artist’s vital stats; recommended tracks; notable tributes and covers by other artists; and a short, punchy mini-profile of each one. The book comes with a 14-track CD compilation, with some nice gritty old tunes from the likes of Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bukka White, and Rev. Robert Wilkins—I’m listening to it right now!

But the real treat is Stout’s Crumby (sorry) portraits. Colorful, evocative, playful, they pay homage both to the original cards and to the great musicians Stout came to admire. There’s the badass blues guitarist Robert Johnson, said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his chops. Champion Jack Dupree, who made the unlikely leap from pro boxer to pro musician. The highly talented yet modest sideman Papa Charlie McCoy. And Lucille Bogan, notorious for her raunchy lyrics. The Crumb effect runs especially strong with certain portraits—for instance, Slim Harpo, whose tunes were covered by a who’s who of 1960s rock icons. Here’s the Stones doing Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips” way back when.

So, okay, I missed those few musicians, but I also learned about plenty of folks I’d never heard of—including a good number of blueswomen. And the poor chap had to crank out 100 portraits. You could hardly ask him to do more. Except that he did so anyway. By the end of Stout’s drawing marathon, he had produced 150 portraits, so maybe a sequel is in the cards. Talk about collecting ’em all!

The book’s cover features a young Muddy Waters, a.k.a. McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913-April 30, 1983). Instruments: guitar, vocals. A spiritual protégé of Son House and Robert Johnson, the prolific Morganfield got his nickname because he loved playing in the mud as a kid. Recommended tracks: “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” “Rollin’ Stone,” “Mannish Boy,” “She Moves Me,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” ” I Just Want to Make Love to You,” “I’m Ready,” “Got My Mojo Working,” “You Shook Me.”

Lead Belly, a.k.a. Huddie Ledbetter (January 1888-December 6, 1949). Instruments: accordion, fiddle, 12-string guitar, mandolin, piano, violin, vocals. Ledbetter, who served several stints in prison, once received a pardon after writing a song appealing to the governor. Recommended tracks: “Black Betty,” “Gallis Pole,” “Boll Weevil,” “New Orleans (Rising Sun Blues),” “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?,” “The Bourgeois Blues.”

Big Maybelle, a.k.a. Maybelle Louise Smith (May 1, 1924-January 23, 1972). Instruments: piano, vocals. Won a Memphis talent contest at age eight, and went on to record several Billboard hits. Recommended tracks: “Gabbin’ Blues,” “Way Back Home,” “My Country Man,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Blues Early Early.”

Blind Boy Fuller, a.k.a. Fulton Allen (July 10, 1907-February 13, 1941). Instruments: guitar, vocals. Began losing his sight during his mid-teens from ulcers due either due to snowblindness or to chemicals thrown in his face by an ex-girlfriend. Recommended tracks: “Rag, Mama, Rag,” “Truckin’ My Blues Away,” “Get Your Yas Yas Out,” “Step It Up and Go,” “Mamie,” “Rattlesnakin’ Daddy.”

Lucille Bogan, a.k.a. Lucille Anderson and Bessie Jackson (April 1, 1897-August 10, 1948). Instruments: accordion, vocals. Known for her bawdy lyrics about booze and sex. Recommended tracks: “Shave Em’ Dry” (explicit version), “B.D. Woman’s Blues” (B.D. stands for “bull dyke”), “Seaboard Blues,” “Troubled Mind,” “Superstitious Blues,” “Black Angel Blues.”

Slim Harpo, a.k.a. James Moore (January 11, 1924-January 31, 1970). Instruments: harmonica, vocals. Music was always a side job for Slim, whose tunes were nonetheless covered by, among others, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Yardbirds. Recommended tracks: “I’m a King Bee,” “I Got Love If You Want It,” “Rainin’ in My Heart,” “Baby Scratch My Back,” “Shake Your Hips.”

Robert Johnson, a.k.a. Robert Leroy Dodds (May 8, 1911-August 16, 1938). Instruments: guitar, vocals. Johnson was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil for tuning his guitar just so. The influential blues master has been covered by the likes of Cream, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. Recommended tracks: “Crossroads Blues,” “Love in Vain,” “Have You Ever Been Lonely,” “Hellhound on My Trail,” “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues,” “From Four Until Late,” “Traveling Riverside Blues,” “Come On in My Kitchen.”

Mississippi Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904-July 3, 1972). Instruments: guitar, vocals. McDowell, who was actually born in Tennessee, divided his time between farming and music until he was “discovered” by folklorist Alan Lomax. Recommended tracks: “You Gottta Move,” “Baby Please Don’t Go,” “Good Morning Little School Girl,” “Jesus Is on the Mainline.”

Victoria Spivey (October 15, 1906-October 3, 1976). Instruments: organ, piano, ukulele, vocals. Spivey’s lyrics were sexually provocative and drug related; she retired from the music biz in 1951 to sing and play in church before returning to the stage in the 1960s, when she founded her own label, Spivey Records. Recommended tracks: “Dope Head Blues,” “TB Blues,” “Black Snake Blues.”

Clarence “Pine Top” Smith (June 11, 1904-March 15, 1929). Instruments: piano, vocals. Smith’s promising career ended abruptly when he was shot and killed during a dance hall ruckus. No photos of him exist, hence the shadowy face. Recommended track: “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie.”

Big Joe Turner, a.k.a. Joseph Vernon Turner Jr. (May 18, 1911-November 24 1985). Instrument: vocals. Turner’s voice was so big he could rock a gin joint without a mic. He became a hit machine during the early ’50s with several No. 1 hits. Recommended tracks: “Roll ‘Em, Pete,” “Honey Hush,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Flip Flop and Fly,” “Cherry Red,” “Wee Baby Blues,” “Midnight Special.”

Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896-September 1, 1977). Instrument: vocals. A sought-after vaudeville performer and nightclub singer who then scored on Broadway and in Hollywood, Waters became the second-ever black actor to be nominated for an Oscar. Recommended tracks: “Heebie Jeebies,” “Am I Blue?,” “Down Home Blues,” “Shake That Thing,” “Maybe Not at All,” “Black Spatch Blues,” “Midnight Blues,” “Jazzin’ Baby Blues.”

Reverend Robert Wilkins (January 16, 1896-May 26, 1987). Instrument: guitar, vocals. In 1935, deeply upset by violence at a party he was playing, Wilkins quit secular music to become a minister and an herbalist. Recommended tracks: “That’s No Way to Get Along,” “Rolling Stone.”

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13 Cartoon Portraits of Legendary Blues Artists

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Harriet Tubman Will Replace Jackson on $20 Bill

by WesleyCrb9 Posted on April 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Who says Broadway musicals are a dying art form?

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday will announce plans to both keep Alexander Hamilton on the front of the $10 bill and to knock Andrew Jackson off the front of the $20 in favor of Harriet Tubman, sources tell POLITICO.

….Lew’s reversal comes after he announced last summer that he was considering replacing Hamilton on the $10 bill with a woman. The plan drew swift rebukes from fans of Hamilton, who helped create the Treasury Department and the modern American financial system….Supporters of putting a woman on the $10 bill have complained that it will take too long to put a woman on the $20 bill. But people familiar with the matter said new designs for the bills should be ready by 2020. Treasury is likely to ask the Federal Reserve, which makes the final decision, to speed the process and get the bills into circulation as quickly as possible.

The movement to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill gathered strength after the Broadway musical named after the former Treasury Secretary and founding father became a runaway smash hit.

Quick! Someone create a smash hit dubstep-zydeco dance musical featuring Andrew Jackson. It’s his only hope.

I still wish Lew had chosen Frances Perkins, since I like the tradition of portraying people on currency who have served in office, but that’s just a personal thing. (Though I do admire Perkins greatly, and think she deserves more attention than she usually gets.) Still, it’s hard to argue with Tubman—or with any of dozens of other women. When you’re going from zero to one, there are a whole lot of worthy choices.

And it’s also nice to see that they can manage to put a new bill in circulation by 2020 after all. I mean, 2030? Seriously? How can it take 15 years to design a new bill and start shipping it to banks?

POSTSCRIPT: There’s a bit of irony here. The $20 bill is ubiquitous largely because that’s what ATMs have been spitting out since the late 70s. But a twenty today is worth less a ten back then. We really ought to be using $50 bills as our go-to walking-around currency these days, and that’s what ATMs should be churning out. By 2020, maybe they will be. And by 2025 cash will probably have disappeared entirely. So by the time Tubman finally makes it onto the twenty, we won’t be using them much anymore. Women just can’t catch a break.

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Harriet Tubman Will Replace Jackson on $20 Bill

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Harriet Tubman to Replace Andrew Jackson on the $20

by ChanelIreland46 Posted on April 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will reportedly announce on Wednesday the decision to replace the image of former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with an image of Harriet Tubman.

Politico reports Lew will also announce that the image of Alexander Hamilton will remain on the $10 bill, but that the back of that bill will feature members of the suffragist movement. Last month, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the Broadway musical Hamilton, met with Lew to discuss keeping the former president on the $10 bill.

The movement to replace Jackson’s image with Tubman’s image started with the “Women on 20’s” group, which advocated featuring a woman on the $20 bill because of Jackson’s controversial support of the Indian Removal Act.

This is a breaking news post. We will update once the announcement is made.

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Harriet Tubman to Replace Andrew Jackson on the $20

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These Racist Collectibles Will Make Your Skin Crawl

by JosetteMakinson Posted on February 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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DAVID PILGRIM bought his first piece of racist memorabilia in the early 1970s, when he was a youngster in Mobile, Alabama. It was a set of salt and pepper shakers meant to caricature African Americans. “I purchased it and broke it” on purpose, recalls Pilgrim, who is black. Yet over the next few decades, he amassed a sizable collection of what he calls “contemptible collectibles”—once-common household objects and products that mock and stereotype black people.

David Pilgrim Ferris State University

PM Press

In 1996, Pilgrim transformed his 3,200-item collection into the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Michigan’s Ferris State University, where he teaches sociology. He presents a selection of these appalling objects and images in his new book, Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice. As the title implies, the book isn’t merely an exercise in shock value. It lays out the philosophy behind Pilgrim’s work as a scholar and an activist: that only by acknowledging these artifacts and their persistence in American culture can we honestly confront our not-so-distant past.

Mother Jones: What made you decide to turn your collection into a museum?

David Pilgrim: When I got to Michigan, someone mentioned that they knew this elderly black woman who was an antiques dealer. After many months, she agreed to let me see her personal collection. It was just objects floor to ceiling in a barnlike structure. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume. It shook me! I thought I’d seen everything. What she had was a testimony to—this is going to sound weird—not just the creativity of racism, but the diversity in it. I remember that day thinking that I wanted to do what she’d done, but in a different way.

MJ: How popular were these collectibles?

DP: They were everyday objects in a lot of people’s homes, including African Americans’. The antiques collector had postcards, posters. She had records, 78s. She had ashtrays. She had a racist bell. I think she had the game called Chopped Up Niggers—it’s a puzzle. She told me that she hadn’t paid very much for many of those pieces because at the time people were throwing stuff away. Some people were ashamed.

“Nigger Milk,” a 1916 magazine advertisement that Pilgrim bought in 1988 Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: Why own them in the first place?

DP: These toys, games, sheet music about “coons” and “darkies”—all these millions, and I mean literally millions, of objects—were integral to maintaining Jim Crow. Jim Crow could not work without violence, real violence, but also the threat of violence and the depiction of violence. There are a number of games in the museum where you throw things at black people: “hit the nigger” or “hit the Negro” games. If you had such a game, you were actually creating safe spaces to do that.

An early 1900s game that depicted an African American as a target Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: Do you also keep track of racist images and memorabilia online?

DP: Absolutely. With the power of the internet and social media, one person can do the damage that in the old days it took many to do. When you have a race-based incident—and I make it my business to look—within one week there are material objects that reflect that incident in a racist way: lunch boxes, posters, puzzles, T-shirts, pillows. President Obama has been an industry for racist objects. He has been portrayed as a witch doctor, a Rastus character from Cream of Wheat, as a Sambo, as an Uncle Tom—and also as gay, as transgender, as communist, as socialist, as a terrorist, as a Muslim. Many of the images that appear online are old. The images from the old “coon” songs from the late 1800s and early 1900s show up in memes, and people don’t realize they’re older images.

A 1940s creamer or pitcher from Pilgrim’s collection Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

1950s fishing lure Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: What sort of people collect this stuff?

DP: There are some who want to educate. I’ve met collectors who collect to destroy the pieces. But by far the biggest segment are speculators who know that a McCoy cookie jar was $3 and you can get several hundred dollars for it now.

MJ: Do you see a role for your collection in today’s movement for racial equality?

DP: One of the questions I get often is why we’re still having these conversations. And my answer is: The objects are still being made, they’re still being sold and distributed. There’s not an image in the museum that’s not being reproduced in some way. Secondly, the reason we still have these discussions is because race still matters. But Americans don’t often talk about it in places where their ideas are challenged. We want our museum to be safe but uncomfortable.

MJ: I found myself hiding your book from my kids. At what age do you think it’s okay to expose children to this stuff?

DP: I believe that young people—8, 9, 10—should have discussions appropriate to their age about race. But no one under 12 can come into the museum by themselves, and we discourage parents from bringing them. Right in the center of the room is a lynching tree. Even though it’s contextualized, it can be a house of horrors.

A ceramic figure from the 1950s Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

Pilgrim writes that historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. found this the most disturbing image in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. It is from an unknown book. Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

Early 1900s postcard Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

“Be-Bop the Jivin Jigger” toy Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

1950s bar set Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

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These Racist Collectibles Will Make Your Skin Crawl

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Sorry, Adele: These Are 2015’s 10 Best Albums

by SallyClogstoun Posted on December 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Each year, Mother Jones‘ house critic browses through hundreds of new albums and pulls out maybe a couple hundred to review for the magazine and website. But only a few can make the final cut. Below, in no particular order save alphabetical, are Jon Young’s abbreviated write-ups of his 10 favorite albums in 2015. Feel free to heartily disagree and share your own faves in the comments.

1. Mose Allison, American Legend Live in California (Ibis): Sly, wry piano blues and jazz from a now-retired giant.

2. Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom+Pop): Ramshackle, catchy Australian guitar pop capturing the absorbing minutiae of everyday life. (Extended review)

3. The Bottle Rockets, South Broadway Athletic Club (Bloodshot): Brian Henneman’s loose-jointed, empathetic roots-rock ages well. (Extended review)

4. D’Angelo, Black Messiah (RCA): Hazy, mind-bending funk of a long-lost maverick. (This one actually dropped in mid-December 2014, too late to make last year’s list, so we’re giving it rollover privileges.)

5. Bob Dylan, The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 (Columbia Legacy): The fascinating rough drafts of a genius at work. (Extended review)

6. Julia Holter, Have You in My Wilderness (Domino): Soothing and gently unsettling chamber pop, like a puzzling dream. (Extended review)

7. Noveller, Fantastic Planet (Fire): Pulsing, multicolored ambient soundscapes built from guitars and synths. (Extended review)

8. Speedy Ortiz, Foil Deer (Carpark): No sophomore slump for Sadie Dupuis’ loquacious, brainy guitar rock. (Extended review)

9. The Staple Singers, Faith & Grace: A Family Journey 1953-1976 (Stax): The monumental gospel legacy of Roebuck “Pops” Staples, daughter Mavis, and family.

10. Barrence Whitfield & the Savages, Under the Savage Sky (Bloodshot): Floor-shaking, lease-breaking R&B. Modern yet retro.

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Sorry, Adele: These Are 2015’s 10 Best Albums

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Boom! George Takei Has the Perfect Response to One of the Craziest Remarks About Syrian Refugees Yet

by KurtB08455204209 Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, David Bowers, the mayor of Roanoke, VA., piled onto the backlash against Syrian refugees led by state governors, in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people. Mayor Bowers requested that all local agencies “suspend and delay any further Syrian refugee assistance until these serious hostilities and atrocities end…and normalcy is restored.” Then he attempted to draw this historical parallel:

I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.

Within hours, Bowers’s statement drew fierce criticism from several Roanoke city council members—who called his remarks “narcissistic” and “unrepresentative” of the local community. And then actor and social media sensation George Takei weighed in. The Star Trek cast member has long been outspoken about his family’s history inside American-held Japanese internment camps, a story chronicled in his Broadway musical, Allegiance.

In a searing open letter to Bowers on Wednesday afternoon—posted to Facebook—Takei called the remarks a “resort to fear-based tactics” and a “galling lack of compassion for people fleeing from these same terrorists.” The post received more than 9 million likes in one day.

From Takei’s Facebook page:

Mayor Bowers, there are a few key points of history you seem to have missed:

1) The internment (not a “sequester”) was not of Japanese “foreign nationals,” but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. I was one of them, and my family and I spent 4 years in prison camps because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It is my life’s mission to never let such a thing happen again in America.

2) There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected “enemies” then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the US already has accepted. We were judged based on who we looked like, and that is about as un-American as it gets.

3) If you are attempting to compare the actual threat of harm from the 120,000 of us who were interned then to the Syrian situation now, the simple answer is this: There was no threat. We loved America. We were decent, honest, hard-working folks. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, over nothing.

Mayor Bowers, one of the reasons I am telling our story on Broadway eight times a week in Allegiance is because of people like you. You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons. So Mayor Bowers, I am officially inviting you to come see our show, as my personal guest. Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.

— George Takei

For more Takei greatness, read our 2012 interview with him, here.

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Boom! George Takei Has the Perfect Response to One of the Craziest Remarks About Syrian Refugees Yet

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Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic – Jennifer L. Scott

by Myrna Posted on October 27, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic

Lessons in Everyday Elegance

Jennifer L. Scott

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: October 27, 2015

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Seller: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc.


The New York Times bestselling author of Lessons from Madame Chic and At Home with Madame Chic revives the timeless quality of poise and shows how to cultivate it as a daily practice and a life-long endeavor. Just step out your door today and you will notice that poise is a rarity in our wired, fast-paced, and unmannerly world. As uncivil behaviors like flip-flops at Broadway shows and digital oversharing proliferate, this timely book reminds us of the quiet power of behaving with dignity, kindness, and grace. Jennifer Scott’s Parisian mentor, Madame Chic, embodied poise, and not just with the good posture, stylish attire, and natural manners that made her extraordinarily elegant. She also demonstrated steady assuredness and graceful calm in everything she did—from interacting with her family and receiving guests at home to presenting herself in public. Jennifer L. Scott passes on the lessons she learned as well as some of her own hard-won wisdom, addressing topics such as proper attire at social events, good grooming, communication skills, hospitality and being a good guest, our interactions with neighbors and strangers, role models, self-discipline, and self-image. This charmingly illustrated, practical, and inspiring book, full of tips, lists, and ideas, is certain to start a new conversation about the timeless art of poise.

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Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic – Jennifer L. Scott

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Wind power could get its tax breaks back

by JayMaselli Posted on July 22, 2015

Wind power could get its tax breaks back

By on 22 Jul 2015commentsShare

The GOP-controlled Senate Finance Committee did right by the clean energy industry yesterday when, as part of a big package of tax break extensions, it cleared the way for the renewal of a key tax credit that supports wind power.

The wind credit was effectively killed last year when an entire $85 billion package of tax breaks failed to make it through the Senate — in part because of GOP opposition to this particular wind energy credit.

In yesterday’s Senate Finance Committee vote, the tax credit package was approved by a vote of 23-3. GOP Sen. Pat Toomey (Penn.) was one of the naysayers on the wind credit, arguing that the it meddles with the energy economy. “We are simply picking winners and losers,” he said during a debate last year on the topic. (Fossil fuel companies get many more billions in tax credits and deductions, but whatever.)

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, however, pushed for the wind credit extension. Iowa produces quite a bit of wind power. “I’ve worked to provide as much certainty as possible to grow the domestic wind industry,” Grassley wrote in a letter to the committee chair earlier this month. “I know firsthand the boom and bust cycle that exists for renewable energy producers when Congress fails to extend these critically important tax incentives.”

Tax breaks like these, which legislators don’t want to make permanent but also don’t want to eliminate altogether, often get renewed en masse in a vote that proves controversial every year. It creates quite a bit of uncertainty for affected industries; investors, for example, are more hesitant about putting their money into wind energy when they aren’t sure how taxes will affect wind producers’ bottom lines.

The package also includes tax credits for a range of industries, including some for big banks and one for Broadway musical producers. The credits would be assured through 2016, when the fight to renew them would begin again.

What’s next for this package of tax breaks isn’t clear. The full Senate has to vote on the package approved by the Senate Finance Committee. The House is considering a similar bill, but may end up doing it’s own thing: The Republican majority there wants to make some breaks permanent, but the wind energy tax credit, opposed by many conservatives, likely won’t be one of those. So who knows if the wind credit will ever make it into law again. Regardless: Progress!

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Wind power could get its tax breaks back

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This Is What Happens When You Cross Donald Trump

by EllaBlocker Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump sure doesn’t take well to criticism. Each time a politician or commentator takes issue with a Trump-ism—and there seems to be no slight too petty for the billionaire to respond to—Trump blasts back with a tweet that ratchets up the rhetoric. This weekend, when he found himself in hot water for disparaging John McCain’s war record, rather than back off his remarks, he doubled down on his critique of the Arizona senator on Twitter.

It’s something the tycoon has done more than a few times since declaring his run for the GOP presidential nomination last month. Below is a compilation of the digs that have gotten under Trump’s skin, and the tweetstorms he’s unleashed in response.

6/16/15: Fox News’ Juan Williams says Trump’s ego is “just on fire” (among other comments that may have irritated Trump).

6/25/15: Univision cuts ties with Trump after his infamous remarks about Mexican immigrants.

6/30/15: After NBCUniversal ends its business relationship with Trump over the GOP candidate’s Mexico remarks, Trump revives an earlier Twitter diatribe against Meet the Press host Chuck Todd.

7/1/15: Macy’s severs ties with Trump after the Mexican immigrant comments. Trump promptly calls for a boycott of the department store.

7/2/15: Rick Perry says Trump’s controversial remarks “offended” him, on ABC News’ This Week.

7/4/15: Jeb Bush joins the ever-expanding list of people to criticize Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants, calling them “extraordinarily ugly” and “way out of the mainstream of what Republicans think.”

7/15/15: Karl Rove goes on Fox News and downplays Trump’s recent surge in the polls.

7/16/15: John McCain tells The New Yorker that Trump “fired up the crazies.”

7/16/15: The magician Penn Jillette calls Trump a man “without filters” and says he’s wrong about everything, on MSNBC.

7/19/15: The Wall Street Journal reports on the McCain controversy and runs an opinion piece asking how long politicos on the right will “keep pretending he’s a serious candidate.”

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This Is What Happens When You Cross Donald Trump

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