Saturday, December 03, 2005

Laura Flanders Show on right now

Swiping from C.I:

Via Martha, here's what's coming up on The Laura Flanders Show:
Today on The Laura Flanders Show
On Air America Radio, 7-10 PM ESTFrom cutting and running after Katrina to shredding more than abortion rights. We look at corruption 'W' style and consider solutions.
MILES RAPOPORT, president of Demos.org on Connecticut's political reforms.
LOUISE MELLING, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project director, on what difference a single Supreme Court decision might make.
A report from the U.N. global warming conference with KERT DAVIES, GreenpeaceUSA research director.
And singer-songwriter-animal rights activist JOY ASKEW.
You can listen to shows you missed: Download archived shows HERE or Subscribe to the Free PODCAST through the iTunes Music Store
Go to the Laura Flanders Blog

So make a point to listen. I always do unless I'm at a concert. If I've got a party I'm throwing here, I've got the show on in the kitchen. (If I'm throwing a party, music's always on the living room stereo.)

Thursday was an effort to blog about race and/or racism online. Rebecca, Wally, Mike & Betty and Cedric participated. I tried to. I don't do well with assignments as anyone who sat in class with me, and I'm sure my permanent record, could tell you.

I spoke on the phone that day to Cedric and C.I. I tossed out ideas to both and both made a point to say, "If you can't do it, don't." C.I.'s reasons were because . . . Well there's a reason C.I.'s dubbed me the Hunter Thompson of the community. My reviews always come later than I say. "I'm working on it, it'll be done tomorrow!" is a popular phrase of mine. And I always mean it. Sometimes it will be something interesting in life happening. And I'll use any excuse to avoid writing. Sometimes it will be that I'm just not happy with a phrase.

Which isn't to claim that my reviews are perfection to the world but it is to say that if my name's on it, I want it to reflect what I feel.

I never care about typos. I do care about sentiment expressed.

C.I. knows that about me and has heard for a year now (because it is a year that I've been contributing to The Common Ills), "It's almost done, it will be done tomorrow."

Now when C.I. went to D.C. to protest the inauguration in January, I did fill in. I probably did two entries that day. I told myself I wasn't going to worry about anything but getting something up because I really believed in (and approved of) C.I.'s protesting the inauguration. So I just wrote essays about the state of music and I had my topics ahead of time. I also was fueld by several pots of coffee, music blasting on the stereo and, of course, the desire to support C.I.'s efforts to say no to the Bully Boy.

Cedric knows I'd rather do anything besides blog. He also knew my problems with the topic which weren't as beautifully expressed as his own but did mirror them on some points. (Read Cedric's "Race" because it's wonderful.) I've lived through enough "Year of the Women" -- which actually seems to be a week of one month while some news magazine, usually Newsweek, declares it such, so for that week, people talk about it and then move on.

When C.I. started using the phrase "the summer of protest," I was leery of that as well. Fortunately, at community sites, it hasn't been something noted once and then forgotten. Everyone who has a site (and Gina and Krista with their newsletter) has written on that theme, extended it and made it more than a happy slogan we all rallied around for a week and then promptly forgot.

I was going to write about music. About the breakthroughs early on, then the Motown breakthroughs (Smokey, the Supremes, the Four Tops, etc.), then Stax and Atlantic and the notion that some weren't "black enough," followed by disco, followed by the quiet storm, followed by where we are today. It was going to be about "crossover" artists and the efforts behind them and about rap and a number of topics.

I even did an outline. Cedric said, "Kat, the minute you wrote that outline, the piece was dead." He was so right. But he said not to work myself up over it. After several attempts at an opening paragraph (and after considering writing a huge draft and then asking C.I. for some editing help), I finally figured, "Screw it" and went to a jazz club with Sumner and Dak Ho to enjoy some music.

Good for everyone that participated but I didn't even blog about C.I.'s "Target: the 9th Circuit (The Republican war on the judiciary continues)" and that went up Tuesday. I figured I would on Saturday. My thoughts on that are "When does the Republican Party get reigned in?"

It's insane what they will do. Sneaking an effort to split the Ninth Circuit into a budget bill?
The thought of the split and Bully Boy stacking a new circuit court neither thrill me nor make me safe.

But I don't do well with assignments and there was no way that finding out Thursday morning that Thursday was blog on race and/or racism day was going to result in anything by me.

And while I've been typing, stopping, reflecting, I've wasted time and Laura Flanders has already started so let me post this thing. (I hate deadlines.)

And let me note Mike's motto:
Motto: The Common Ills community is important and the Common Ills community is important to me. So I'll do my part for the Common Ills community.

I'll also note that I just heard, on Flanders' show, Bully Boy's "I will not cut & run remark." I read about it this week but I avoid him on TV and radio. Hearing his lifeless "I will not cut & run" nonsense reminded me of a guy who's bound and determined to make sure you have an orgasm to the point where sex loses all of it's joy.

Turn on your radios, Laura Flanders is on right now.













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