Tag Archives: culture

Word of the Day: Gung-Ho

Mother Jones

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A few minutes ago I checked the dictionary to see if the word gung-ho is hyphenated. (Yes, it is.) Reading a bit further, I was fascinated to find the following etymology:

Origin:
introduced as a training slogan in 1942 by U.S. Marine officer Evans F. Carlson (1896–1947) < Chinese gÅ&#141;ng hé, the abbreviated name of the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society, taken by a literal translation as “work together”

Wikipedia adds a bit more detail:

The term was picked up by United States Marine Corps Major Evans Carlson from his New Zealand friend, Rewi Alley, one of the founders of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. Carlson explained in a 1943 interview: “I was trying to build up the same sort of working spirit I had seen in China where all the soldiers dedicated themselves to one idea and worked together to put that idea over. I told the boys about it again and again. I told them of the motto of the Chinese Cooperatives, Gung Ho. It means Work Together-Work in Harmony….”

Later Carlson used gung ho during his (unconventional) command of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. From there, it spread throughout the U.S. Marine Corps (hence the association between the two), where it was used as an expression of spirit and into American society as a whole when the phrase became the title of a 1943 war film, Gung Ho!, about the 2nd Raider Battalion’s raid on Makin Island in 1942.

Maybe this origin story is common knowledge. I don’t know—though I’ve never seen it on Jeopardy! or in a crossword puzzle. In any case, it was new to me, so maybe it’s new to you too. It’s certainly interesting that our modern-day use of the word has approximately nothing to do with working together, which I suppose is just a linguistic casualty of war.

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Word of the Day: Gung-Ho

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Kanye West Performs for a Dictator’s Family, and Human Rights Activists Are Livid

Mother Jones

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Trying to steal Taylor Swift’s thunder is no longer the most cringeworthy thing Kanye West has ever done.

Over the weekend, the hip-hop artist performed for a dictator’s kin. On Saturday, West was in Almaty (Kazakhstan’s largest city) performing at the wedding reception of Aisultan Nazarbayev, the 23-year-old grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev has ruled the central Asian country for 23 years since its independence from the dissolved Soviet Union, and has come under fire by human rights organizations for his authoritarian tactics, including attacks on a free press, torture, torpedoing workers’ rights, and jailing the political opposition. (In 2011, Sting canceled a gig in Kazakhstan after Amnesty International got in touch with him about the human rights abuses.)

For his performance (which included a rendition of “Can’t Tell Me Nothing“), West reportedly received $3 million. Here’s a brief clip from the event:

A news agency in Kazakhstan reported that West was a personal guest of the controversial strongman. As you can imagine, human rights advocates aren’t thrilled about any of this.

“Kazakhstan is a human rights wasteland,” Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), said in a statement sent to Mother Jones. “The regime crushes freedom of speech and association; someone like Kanye, who makes a living expressing his views, would find himself in a prison under Nazarbayev’s rule.”

“The millions of dollars paid to West came from the loot stolen from the Kazakhstan treasury,” said Garry Kasparov, a noted critic of Vladimir Putin and chairman of HRF. “West has supported numerous charities throughout his career, including a few specifically focused on international human rights work. Kanye has entertained a brutal killer and his entourage…It’s up to the public to hold him accountable.”

West is now in the growing club of celebrities caught getting chummy with despots. In 2012, Kim Kardashian, the reality-TV socialite and mother of West’s child, is in it, too. In 2012, she traveled to Bahrain and generated positive press for a regime that was still taking heat for its bloody crackdown on political dissidents. (Following her arrival, Bahrain police were deployed to control “hard-line” Islamic protesters enraged at her presence.)

Earlier this summer, Jennifer Lopez was slammed by human rights groups for her paid performance at the lavish birthday bash of 56-year-old Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the human-rights-quashing dictator of Turkmenistan. Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Lionel Richie, and Usher had all danced and sung for relatives of the deceased Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi. Godfather of Soul James Brown and blues guitar legend B.B. King performed for Zaire president Mobutu Sese Seko, a vicious anti-communist tyrant. British supermodel Naomi Campbell was caught hanging out with Charles Taylor, a convicted war criminal and ex-president of Liberia. And the list goes on.

The human rights violations and internationally denounced actions of all the above can be found in five seconds on Google. Maybe famous people who don’t need the money—and the people they hire to vet their appearances—should use it more.

West’s publicist did not respond to Mother Jones‘ request for comment.

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Kanye West Performs for a Dictator’s Family, and Human Rights Activists Are Livid

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"Another Self Portrait" Is Bob Dylan’s Latest Tribute to His Musical Influences

Mother Jones

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Bob Dylan
Another Self Portrait:
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10
Columbia

Bob Dylan’s 1970 double album Self Portrait shocked and dismayed some of the faithful at the time of release, confusing audiences looking for another mind-boggling classic. Dominated by traditional songs and cover versions (“Blue Moon,” Let Be Me,” etc.) performed in a seemingly lackadaisical manner, it came off as a determined attempt to defy expectations and shed the pressure of being a messiah. In retrospect, Self Portrait makes more sense, being Dylan’s salute to music that helped make him who he is (hence the title), while sustaining the down-home vibe of John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, though the cluttered arrangements are still distracting.

The mostly excellent Bootleg Series has allowed Dylan to explain himself more fully, something he never would have deigned to do so directly four decades ago, and the two-disc Another Self Portrait is especially useful in that regard. Drawing on sessions for Nashville Skyline and New Morning, as well as Self Portrait, it offers alternate takes, undubbed versions and revelatory outtakes, depicting a Dylan more interested in revisiting his folk beginnings than trying to exasperate the fans. The previously unheard “Pretty Saro” and “Annie’s Going to Sing Her Song” recall the young Woody Guthrie disciple, while “Belle Isle” and “Little Sadie” improve dramatically in their stripped-down settings.

After 10 editions, The Bootleg Series continues to surprise with fresh perspectives on the greatest songwriter of the rock’n’roll era, which is no mean feat. Completists will opt for the four-disc set, which adds the original Self Portrait and Dylan’s spirited 1969 concert with The Band at the Isle of Wight festival
.

Link to original: 

"Another Self Portrait" Is Bob Dylan’s Latest Tribute to His Musical Influences

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"Made in California" Is the Essential (and Nonessential) Beach Boys

Mother Jones

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The Beach Boys
Made in California
Capitol/Ume

With a staggering 174 tracks on six discs, Made in California is not the place to start for anybody interested in learning why The Beach Boys were arguably America’s premier band. For that, consult one of the umpteen greatest hits collections or Pet Sounds, their acknowledged masterpiece. But this massive hodgepodge of classics, obscurities, and barrel-scrapings—more than 60 of them previously unreleased—offers a compelling portrait of resident Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson in all his brilliance, and reveals a group of remarkable versatility, able to blend soulful doo-wop, Phil Spector’s wall of sound, jazzy pre-rock vocal harmonies a la the Four Freshmen, and rollicking Chuck Berry-style rock into one exciting identity.

From callow treats like “In My Room” and “Be True to Your School” to the ambitious intricacies of “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” Wilson had few rivals when it came to catchy singles. As he started to share creative control with the rest of the band in the second half of the ’60s, the results were spottier and weirder, with mediocrities outnumbering the winners throughout the ’70s and ’80s. Then the Beach Boys splintered, seemingly for good. Made in California can’t hide the quality-control issues, although it does shine a light on worthy less-celebrated songs like “Baby Blue” and “All This Is That,” and touches on their tantalizing, short-lived 2012 reunion. While hardly essential, this handsome package has plenty to lure Beach Boys diehards. You know who you are.

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"Made in California" Is the Essential (and Nonessential) Beach Boys

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Houndmouth Comes Alive

Mother Jones

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Jim Herrington

During the performance of a song called “Penitentiary” at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival last month, Houndmouth’s curly-haired guitarist and vocalist Matt Myers was very deliberate in his annunciation of the first line: “I hid a batch in Fresco/I couldn’t score a job/So I did the next best thing and I learned how to rob.” He’s referring to a Dallas suburb—not to be mistaken for Frisco, San Francisco’s out-of-vogue nickname.

“I thought of changing it to Waco,” Myers told me after the set, lounging backstage with bandmates Katie Toupin (keys), Zak Appleby (bass), and Shane Cody (drums), and sipping bourbon from a mug. “I know people from San Francisco don’t like to hear their city called Frisco.”

From the Hills Below the City, Houndmouth’s debut on Rough Trade earlier this year, features a dozen tracks of corn-fed middle-American roots rock. In addition to the Frisco/Fresco thing, it name-drops at least a half-dozen southern states, towns, and cities. The songs are filled with stories about hittin’ the road, ridin’ the rails, gettin’ thrown in jail, and comin’ back home—dropping all nonessential “g”s.

Continue Reading »

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Houndmouth Comes Alive

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Is "Getaway" This Summer’s Worst Movie?

Mother Jones

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Via Rotten Tomatoes

Quite possibly, yes.

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Is "Getaway" This Summer’s Worst Movie?

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Morgan Spurlock’s One Direction Documentary Is a Threat To Democracy And Safety

Mother Jones

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One Direction: This Is Us
TriStar Pictures
92 minutes

It’s upon us.

One Direction, the English/Irish boy band sensation that is worth roughly a billion dollars, has a new documentary in theaters. The 3D film examines the five members‘ lives on and off the arena stage, portraying them as normal, down-to-earth people who love their families and are bemused by bowls of Japanese food. It’s produced by Simon Cowell and directed by Morgan Spurlock, the same guy who did Super Size Me, made a documentary on The Simpsons and failed to track down Osama bin Laden in this critically tarred mess of a movie.

One Direction has sold 30 million records and the boys have been invited to the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama (they couldn’t make it, though). But the really important thing about One Direction is that they are venerated by a violent, ravenous international cult of adolescents.

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This article – 

Morgan Spurlock’s One Direction Documentary Is a Threat To Democracy And Safety

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

Mother Jones

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Detroit, Michigan, is finally getting its monument to RoboCop.

Last May, photos began circulating online of a giant statue made in honor of the legendary cyborg law enforcer. It’s the result of a Kickstarter campaign by the Imagination Station, a Detroit nonprofit specializing in art and renovation. Three months later, the statue has finally reached Detroit soil.

The model, assembled at Across the Board Creations in British Colombia, arrived Wednesday afternoon in a crate. “Slow and steady wins the race,” Brandon Walley, director of development at the Imagination Station, wrote me earlier this week. But the statue’s journey began long before this summer. The story of how this RoboCop duplicate came into being is a complex two-year saga involving Hollywood executives, political division, gonzo art—and the actual star of RoboCop.

The statue’s origin is, in fact, entirely political. In early 2011, the Democratic Mayor of Detroit and retired NBA Hall of Famer Dave Bing was promoting the Detroit Works Project, an initiative that called for community input to create a “strategic framework plan” for the city. He got the word out on Twitter, which earned him some thoughtful response—and the standard jest. One of the tweeted suggestions came from user @MT, who asked if the city would devote a chunk of its budget to erecting a statue to RoboCop, the eponymous protagonist from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 action film, which is set in a futuristic, chaotic, and ruined Detroit. (For the uninitiated, the film RoboCop satirizes the excess and horrors of the Reagan era. The character and franchise has since become an American pop-culture icon. A 2014 remake is on the way.)

This is all Mayor Bing had to say about @MT’s modest proposal:

…which spurred further discussion on the matter:

Bing did not entertain the idea of building a fully functional killing machine, either.

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Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit

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Quiz: All The Words That Aren’t Fit to Print in the New York Times

Mother Jones

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The Gray Lady has her standards, at least. For as long as anyone has kept track, the New York Times has enforced a strict policy of avoiding language it deems offensive while jumping through hoops to explain why. While cursing is permitted in excerpted works of fiction, in the paper’s news sections, f-bombs, s-words, racial slurs, and off-color terms such as “screw,” are strictly non grata. (The one exception: The 1998 publication of the NSFW Starr Report.)

No one—even Joe Biden—is exempt. In the hands of the Times copy desk, “cocksuckers” becomes “Offensive Adjective Inappropriate for Family Newspaper“; “fuck you money” is “forget you money“; and “slutbag” is euphemized as just one of “several vulgar and sexist terms” uttered by New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s spokeswoman. If—to borrow a trope that really ought to be banned—the Eskimos have 100 words for snow, the New York Times has at least 100 ways to say “fuck.” None of them use the word “fuck.”

Can you read between the lines to figure out which words the Times copy desk considered unfit to print in the quotes below? Give it your best fucking shot:

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Quiz: All The Words That Aren’t Fit to Print in the New York Times

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Deep Throat’s Parking Garage to Be Demolished

Mother Jones

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As historic landmarks go, the parking garage at 1401 Wilson Blvd, in Arlington, Va., just outside DC isn’t much to look at. But parking space 32D helped in its own way to bring down a president. The parking space is the famous meeting spot of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and W. Mark Felt, better known as “Deep Throat” and Woodward’s source for the scoops on the Watergate burglary that eventually forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. But as with so many historic landmarks, nothing in this country is sacred. The parking space is on the verge of obliteration.

A developer is planning to raze the 50-year-old office building above the garage and replace it with—what else?—swanky new condos. Tim Helmig, vice president of Monday Properties, recognizes the historic import of the parking garage and plans to commemorate it with a plaque or something miniscule after 32D falls to the wrecking ball. But he told the Washington Business Journal that the garage has got to go, saying, “The garage is at the end of its useful life, and with the redevelopment the configuration of the garage itself is going to change.”

That’s the trouble with many of the Watergate landmarks. The critical moments in the greatest political scandal in modern American history took place in some of the most mundane locations. When members of Nixon’s reelection campaign watched as the burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate, for instance, they conducted their stakeout from Room 723 in the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge across the street. (The famous “plumbers’ unit” also had a room at the hotel a few floors down, where they listened to wiretaps from the bug placed in the DNC offices.) The hotel preserved the famous room and opened it to guests making Watergate pilgrimages. But in 1999, George Washington University bought the HoJos and turned it into student housing. Today, Room 723 is just another college dorm room. But at least it’s still there.

The parking garage demolition will wipe a famous site off the map, and given that this is part of Washington political history, the demo may not go off without a fight. Washington has an earnest core of history preservation activists, who’ve attempted to preserve all sorts of abominations for the sake of posterity. (See this “new brutalist” church, for instance.) By comparison, parking space 32D seems worth saving.

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Deep Throat’s Parking Garage to Be Demolished

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