Today in 1959, Bertolt Brecht‘s “Threepenny Opera” reached the U.S. charts in a way Brecht …
… could not have fathomed:
Today in 1968, Apple Records released its first single by — surprise! — the Beatles:
Today in 1969, this spent three weeks on top of the British charts, on top of six weeks on top of the U.S. charts, making them perhaps the ultimate one-number-one-hit-wonder:
I think everyone knows my opinion: the indictments are stupid and politically motivated, and if Trump is convicted the conviction is almost certain to be overturned on appeal — which will happen after the election, though, so the convictions will have served their intended purpose.
I would like to see the whole thing rolled back and thoroughly defeated.
But why does Trump have to commit so many unforced errors?
Back on his own platform, Truth Social, the former president just posted an MSNBC article attacking the Ron DeSantis Covid record in Florida.
How can any Trump supporter approve of that? The arguments MSNBC makes are that DeSantis didn’t lock down and mask enough. Does Trump agree? Do his supporters agree?
Have we all lost our minds? Have we already forgotten what the psychos put us through?
I’m well aware that DeSantis wasn’t perfect — I chronicled the whole fiasco every day for nearly three years, for heaven’s sake.
But Florida had an excellent record, and in fact all-cause mortality was better in Florida than in lockdown-mad California.
That fact alone shuts down every left-wing attack on places like Florida.
Why is Trump siding with Fauci yet again, and why are his supporters silent about it, or even happily spreading an idiotic MSNBC article that endorses all the measures they themselves spent two years opposing?
Some things, I can look the other way. Not this. We endured too much. There is no political advantage that could be worth pretending that Florida would have done better if it had listened to Fauci rather than Jay Bhattacharya.
Mike Solana opens his technology blog with …
As the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice attempts to jail the opposition party’s frontrunner presidential candidate, Americans have naturally been distracted by the largeness of these questions: did Trump “do it” (whatever “it” is (there’s a new thing every month or so)), will justice be delivered equally among the rest of our crooked politicians, and what will actually happen — just technically speaking — if Trump is both convicted of some crime or other and triumphant in the next election? The subject is important, if nebulous …
You might ask how can anyone support Trump given what he’s been like. Read on for an answer:
Last week, to broad industry shock, Biden’s DOJ filed a lawsuit against SpaceX for “discriminating” in favor of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Only hiring Americans? Not in this country, asshole (this country is America). As Alex Tabarrok reported for Marginal Revolution, the SpaceX story was a strange case for many reasons, the government’s own policy ostensibly in conflict with the lawsuit most importantly among them. On Twitter/X, Elon argued the decision to hire American citizens wasn’t his choice. It was the law, which by the way our government was also following.
At its most basic, the conflict between SpaceX and the DOJ appears to be rooted in confusion over terminology. Space companies are ITAR-controlled, which means they can only hire “US Persons.” The phrase “US Person” apparently includes refugees and asylum seekers waiting for their day in court, while the phrase “US Citizen” does not. The government has itself used the phrases interchangeably, I guess by mistake, for years. Nonetheless, the DOJ is taking Elon Musk to court, and the reason is obvious: the Democratic Party considers him an enemy.
Elon is a proponent of “free speech,” and regardless of how perfectly the value has manifested on his platform, it’s undeniable the spectrum of acceptable politics on Twitter/X has broadened. This, for a certain kind of radical political creature, is intolerable. Kristen Clarke, head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division leading the lawsuit, not only appears to be quite racist (all “satire,” she has since alleged), but is a committed proponent of limiting speech online. Her repugnant view is held in the name of combating “hate speech,” a purposely ambiguous term that can, by design, be applied to ‘politically incorrect’ opinions on almost any polarizing topic from immigration to welfare. “Misinformation,” another concern of hers, has similarly been weaponized by the state.
For the DOJ, none of this is about SpaceX. This is all, obviously, about Elon’s stated intention for Twitter/X to remain politically neutral, which is to say this is all about the next election. Obviously. Elon is being warned: fall in line, or we will make your life a living hell. He will have to choose, as will the rest of the industry over the coming year.
The most dangerous aspect of our last election was the broad alliance between political power (including unelected political power), media, and the technology industry — the early shape of an indomitable One Party State. But that alliance, while still loosely intact, has slightly eroded over the last year. In tech, specifically, it is less socially acceptable to be so openly authoritarian. The Washington Post is therefore now preparing readers to blame Twitter/X, Meta, and YouTube for a Trump victory following a general (if very slight) relaxing of draconian, pro-DNC speech restrictions. One such horrifying liberalization: Meta now allows users to opt out of seeing fact checks on Facebook posts. This story will carry on for many months to come, likely reaching its zenith sometime around the next “stolen” election. (Washington Post)
It continues to amaze me how many pundits assume voters are voting only for the presidential candidate. Biden’s administration has been a trainwreck of bad ideas and bad policy execution, apparently aided by tech companies and the mainstream media. The only way to get rid of bad policy is to get rid of the vegetable on top of the Democratic ballot next year.
(I do realize that Trump had his own share of bad policy, and of course he’s not exactly balanced either. As I have written before, I want neither Trump nor Biden running next year.)
Today in 1966, the Beatles played their last concert for which tickets were charged, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
Today in 1970, Edwin Starr was at number one on both sides of the Atlantic:
Britain’s number one album today in 1981:
Ask a magician for the number one song today in 1982, and the magician will say …
Madison never came up in Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate. But Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway quickly became the center of much of the post-debate discourse after she invited critics to renew their faith in the country by visiting “cities run by Democrats.”
“Oh my …,” conservative commentator Katie Pavlich tweeted in response, seemingly in disbelief.
The Republican Party of Florida tweeted photos of headlines about people leaving Democratic-run cities for Republican states.
Responding to a question at a Democratic National Committee press conference about a “nation in decline” — reiterated later by some of the candidates who said crime has left Democratic-led cities “hollowed out” — Rhodes-Conway said: “I would suggest that anybody who thinks that this country is in decline: Come to cities. Because Democrat mayors all across the nation are creating great places where people want to be.”
Let’s see Conway walk around unescorted on Madison’s South Side. Or the north side of Milwaukee. Or the non-gentrified parts of Chicago.
It wasn’t long before Republicans blasted Rhodes-Conway across social media. Many incredulous posters on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, questioned whether Madison’s mayor had been to San Francisco, Chicago, Portland and other cities experiencing high rates of crime and homelessness.
Others noted that Rhodes-Conway’s comments came before the debate in Milwaukee, a city where shootings left at least three dead and 20 injured between Friday and Sunday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“It’s extraordinary to think about the violence that’s claiming innocent lives literally every week in every major city in this country,” former Vice President Mike Pence said at the debate. “And yet, Democrats and liberal prosecutors in major metropolitan areas continue to work out their fanciful agendas, to do bail reform and go easy.”
In her remarks, Rhodes-Conway encouraged critics to “come to places like Madison, Wisconsin, where we have the lowest unemployment rate — or damn near close to it — in the country. Where our population growth and our economic growth is driving the state of Wisconsin.”
Madison is the urban example of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards’ comment about George H.W. Bush that Bush was “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
Despite the ongoing blowback, Rhodes-Conway said Thursday the past day for her had been interesting but normal. She stood by her Wednesday remarks.
“I think that the challenges that our country faces, challenges around homelessness and lack of housing, challenges around alcohol and substance abuse, challenges around violence, challenges that come from poverty — those are universal. They happen everywhere.
“Those challenges are not unique to one form of living or governance,” she continued. “And yet they get blamed on cities, which I think is patently unfair.”
Rhodes-Conway said some issues, like drug usage, are more visible in places like San Francisco than elsewhere only because people are more clustered in cities.
She named a long list of cities with policies she admires: The tiny home village in Olympia, Washington, built to address homelessness; Burlington, Vermont, sourcing all of its electricity from renewable sources; the effort in Springfield, Illinois, to bring broadband to every home.
Rhodes-Conway said that while some cities were declining in population, many of those people were flocking to other liberal cities, not rural areas.
“They’re searching out places like Madison because of our quality of life, and because of the work that we’ve done to invest in that quality of life,” she said.
In fairness, Madison may not be the most representative of Democratic-run cities (nor is it, technically, run by Democrats; local offices like mayor and City Council are nonpartisan positions, but the city is famously liberal and votes overwhelmingly Democratic).
The city’s violent crime rate is lower than the national average, and its average income is higher. And unlike many of the country’s cities with 250,000 or more people, Madison is growing.
Proof that state government is too large.
With a major university and thousands of government jobs, Madison’s economy has enjoyed a buffer against recessions and the globalization that crippled industries in many of America’s cities, especially in the Midwest.
Job stability and high income have been repeatedly linked to low crime. So has obtaining a high level of education.
The city’s median household income is about $70,500, just over the national average of $69,000. Here, 58.5% of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33.7% nationwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
There were five homicides in Madison in 2018, four in 2019, 10 in 2020 and 10 in 2021, according to the Madison Police Department.
Buffalo, New York, with a median household income of $42,000 per year, saw an average of 54 homicides per year between 2006 and 2022, according to city data. St. Louis, where the median household income is $48,750, saw around 200 murders per year between 2019 and 2022. In Toledo, Ohio, where the median household brings in $41,671, there were 36 homicides in 2018, 38 in 2019 and 57 in 2020, WTOL reported.
Safe or not, Madison is still a Democratic city, which presents its own reasons for conservatives to be dismissive of the mayor. The city has proudly worn the motto, “77 square miles surrounded by reality.”
In this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, about 90% of the city’s voters went for the liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz. In the state’s other Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, she received about 80% of the vote.
The city has become increasingly important for Democrats in statewide elections. And given the few swing states left in America besides Wisconsin, Madison has also become increasingly critical in national elections.
Take the 2020 election, where President Joe Biden won Wisconsin by 21,000 votes after securing 136,000 votes in Madison to former President Donald Trump’s 23,000.
Now, with less than a year and a half until the 2024 presidential election, the political fortunes of those on the stage Wednesday — or of Trump, who skipped the debate — could again be determined in Democratic cities like Madison.
You could not pay me enough money to live in Madison. Why? Because of the people.
Something called the TIPP Insights Editorial Board editorializes:
There were eight candidates on the Milwaukee debate stage. The consensus from the mainstream media is that only one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, stood out.
Ramaswamy did not become the center of attention because he was young, quick, telegenic, and relaxed (with an oversized plastic smile that many on social media found irritating). He became the night’s star for aggressively pursuing a MAGA agenda without any of former President Trump’s baggage.
The similarities to Trump in 2015 were unmistakable. Ramaswamy is an Ivy League-educated millionaire entrepreneur who flies in his own private jet and has never run for public office. Draining the swamp is something he can do well, never having been part of one. The only other authentic non-swamp person with business credentials was North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgam, who created Great Plains software and sold it to Microsoft for over $1 billion before winning the election in a landslide.
The remaining six candidates looked unserious and did not appear to have a strategy to help solve America’s and the world’s biggest problems. They were all eager for the job but, other than possibly Ron DeSantis, whose biggest political accomplishment has been in turning Florida deep-red, did not instill any confidence that they could become an effective leader of the Free World.
The debate continued for two hours, each candidate reciting practiced lines. But many of the responses were remarkably similar to those that you hear from the Democrats.
Abortion. On abortion, only North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis agreed that the matter has now irreversibly and correctly moved to the states. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that a federal ban was impractical (meaning it was a process issue because the measure couldn’t get 60 Senate votes) but did not appreciate the elegance of the Supreme Court decision when it ruled based on the supremacy of the Tenth Amendment. Mike Pence wants a six-week federal ban; Tim Scott wants a 15-week federal ban. Both sounded like Democrats arguing for federal control of a state issue.
Federal debt. No candidate spoke convincingly about how they would solve the country’s massive debt problem, now inching towards $50 trillion in ten years. Pence avoided answering a question about how the debt ballooned during his time as VP. Instead, he cautioned that the Trump tax cuts were about to sunset in 2025 and that he would irresponsibly extend them without saying how he would pay for them. No one even raised the issue of entitlement reform, with only a few talking about cuts to discretionary spending, which accounts for less than 15% of the budget.
Election integrity. No one addressed what caused hundreds of thousands to march in Washington on January 6, 2021. No one complimented the many GOP states that have passed election integrity reform laws since 2020. By staying away from the issue, they looked like the average Democrat who insists that a whole slew of 2020 election irregularities (no-excuse absentee ballots, drop-boxes, insufficient signature validation, late acceptance of ballots, illegal Zuckbucks-type contributions, etc.) does not merit attention.
Law and order. While there were comments about the idiocy of defunding the police and fentanyl, no one spoke about the disaster in the summer of 2020 when race riots killed four times as many people as on January 6. No one had a plan to rid American urban areas of homelessness, abject poverty, unhygienic conditions, and drug abuse, other than to argue for more police. We know that stepped-up law enforcement alone will not address the issue.
Big Tech and misinformation. Gov. DeSantis was most comfortable discussing how Florida dealt with school closings and mask mandates. But nearly everyone else seemed more like Democrats. No one challenged COVID’s origins; no one declared that it was wrong for the government to work with Big Tech to suppress meaningful dialog under the garb of misinformation. No one criticized the 51 intelligence officers who deliberately helped sway the election to Biden.
Ukraine and foreign policy. The moderators shockingly did not bring up Ukraine until after the debate’s first hour. No candidate addressed why Russia did not attack Ukraine when President Trump was in office. No one discussed the risk that the Russia-Ukraine war could escalate to World War III. No candidate assured Americans about nuclear weapons. Pence, Christie, and Haley continued the Democratic establishment position that supporting Ukraine was in America’s national security interests, falsely asserting that Putin would invade other NATO countries if he were not stopped. No one discussed the rise of the BRICS countries or how they would take steps to ensure that the dollar remains the world’s dominant currency.
Deep State and Lawfare. Other than Tim Scott, Ramaswamy, and DeSantis, no candidate spoke about the weaponization of the DOJ. No one talked about how the Deep State triggered the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax that crippled the first two years of the Trump administration. No debater acknowledged that, based on what we now know about the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine, Trump’s first impeachment was unwarranted. No candidate offered that regarding January 6, Trump was already punished -being impeached a second time and acquitted by the Senate – so pressing criminal charges against a political opponent was unAmerican.
The modern GOP is firmly uniparty and indistinguishable from the Washington Democrats and the Beltway types. Without a MAGA agenda, a new GOP administration would essentially look like the Biden administration, except for a few changes to appeal to the religious right.
Well, if I were a Republican presidential candidate and the MAGA agenda meant a $3 trillion tax increase (as in the 10 percent tariff Trump stupidly wants) I wouldn’t be running on that agenda either. Nor would I be running on an agenda that claims that Putin is misunderstood and just wants, you know, a Russian version of lebensraum.
Nikki Haley did correctly point out that Trump’s presidency increased the federal debt by $8 trillion in just four years. TIPP’s own website has an opinion by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul on that very subject. I am curious how TIPP Insights suggests cutting the debt.
The number one single today in 1961 was made more popular by Elvis Presley, not its creator:
Also today in 1961, the Marvelettes released what would become their first number one song:
Today in 1964, the Beatles met Bob Dylan after a concert in Forest Hills, N.Y. Dylan reportedly introduced the Beatles to marijuana:
We begin with an interesting anniversary: Today in 1965, the Beatles used the final day of their five-day break from their U.S. tour to attend a recording session for the Byrds and to meet Elvis Presley at Presley’s Beverly Hills home.
The group reportedly found Presley “unmagnetic,” about which John Lennon reportedly said, “Where’s Elvis? It was like meeting Engelbert Humperdinck.”
Today in 1967, Jimi Hendrix released “Purple Haze”:
Three years later, Hendrix made his last concert appearance in Great Britain at the Isle of Wight Festival, which also featured, for your £3 ticket …
The first GOP debate of the 2024 presidential primary season began on Fox News this week with an unusual prompt: a clip of a low-budget country song from an artist who had no public name recognition as of three weeks ago.
“’Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end,” singer Oliver Anthony proclaims with his thick red beard and a Southern drawl. “These rich men north of Richmond, lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, the blue-collar track has exploded in popularity and shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Anthony made history by becoming the first singer-songwriter to top the chart without ever previously releasing a song. The hit has more than 37 million views in roughly two weeks on YouTube and is its No. 1 trending music video.
“Hollywood” has long been synonymous with progressive media. Republicans have scoffed at the powerful microphone that they believe liberal elites hold in television, film and music. And as the country becomes increasingly polarized, conservatives are coalescing to amplify their own voices.
In an interview with The Hill, Montclair State University associate professor Joel Penney, the author of “Pop Culture, Politics, and the News: Entertainment Journalism in the Polarized Media Landscape,” credited the rise in conservative entertainment to a newfound appreciation for it. The slightly older conservative media world “didn’t think that pop culture was even worthy of attention,” Penney said.
But now, he added, conservatives have realized “the path towards long-term political success [is] to take back the pop culture from the left, which they see as totally dominating the entertainment world.”
“Rich Men North of Richmond” has garnered passionate praise from firebrand right-wing figures including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
“This is the message that Washington needs to hear because this is how our people actually think and feel,” Greene posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Lake, who is eyeing a 2024 Senate bid, said that “It’s raw, it’s true, & it’s touching the hearts of men & women across this great nation.”
And Anthony isn’t alone in finding success this summer with a conservative audience that typically receives little attention from major artists.
Country star Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” also topped the Billboard chart with its right-leaning message.
“Got a gun that my granddad gave me. They say one day they’re gonna round up,” Aldean sings. “Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck.”
The corresponding music video was heavily criticized for its clips of Black Lives Matter protests set alongside footage of a store robbery, carjacking and images of people setting American flags on fire. The video was shot at the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., where 18-year-old Henry Choate was infamously lynched in 1927.
Country Music Television removed the song from its rotation, but Republicans jumped to defend it.
“Jason Aldean is a fantastic guy who just came out with a great new song. Support Jason all the way. MAGA!!!” former President Trump posted on his Truth Social account.
“When the media attacks you, you’re doing something right. [Aldean] has nothing to apologize for,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) echoed.
And the summer of red-state entertainment has not been confined to music.
Last month, faith-based thriller “Sound of Freedom” caught Hollywood by surprise, grossing more than the latest Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible films with its tale of a former federal agent rescuing children from sex trafficking.
Critics have slammed the movie for amplifying conspiracy theories surrounding child exploitation. The movie’s star, Jim Caviezel, who also played Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ,” is a prominent QAnon promoter, and the movie’s plot raises the same issue — child sex trafficking — at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy, which falsely claims that elite Democrats are involved in trafficking rings and cannibalism.
Prominent Republicans have praised the film. Trump hosted a private screening in Bedminster, N.J., and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) commented “Wow. Wow. Wow” after seeing it, urging followers to take the time to do the same.
The rise of these conservative pop culture hits is no coincidence. As politics increasingly invade all aspects of society, conservative artists such as Anthony and Aldean may see an opening to expand their fanbase and push back on institutions that the right has historically criticized for favoring Democrats over Republicans.
Penney said the summer’s viral moments have been “useful for the conservative movement because it expressed this kind of populist anger at elites.”
“[Republicans] saw this viral video as almost a political ad, the best political ad they could possibly find for the upcoming election cycle,” he said.
“There’s an authenticity that comes across particularly when he’s singing about peoples’ dissatisfaction with the economy and poor wages. … A lot of people are disenchanted with the way our economy is functioning.”
The success of “Sound of Freedom” and “Rich Men North of Richmond” suggest that Hollywood and the music industry may have overlooked an audience of conservatives eager to listen and watch media that better represents them and their views.
It’s too soon to tell whether these recent hits represent the start of a larger divide in entertainment — or if the summer of 2023 turns out to be a one-hit wonder for conservative pop culture.
More like three hits in the current case.
The country music audience has probably always been more traditional in worldview than, say, pop or rock music listeners. Conservative ideas do occasionally make it into pop music, even by people whose views may have shifted over time:
The grievance level conservatives feel about having their traditional morals spat upon by the modern world might be at an unprecedented level, though. Many conservatives have espoused boycotting pop culture — not going to movies, not watching TV and not buying recordings with whose views they disapprove. Beating the mainstream culture at its own game has to be satisfying at some level.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 