Thursday, January 28, 2010

Merchants of Fear


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No.5 -- January 30, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #100, Feb. 2:

Merchants of Fear


Executive summary

Governments get citizens to act against their interets (e.g., by going to war) by scaring them bleepless. We'll hear a talk by historian Howard Zinn*, quoting Hermann Goering on the subject . . . a "public service" announcement and program warning of the imminent threat of terrorist attacks, which could be launched by anybody (from 2009!) . . . a warning from Postmaster General John E. Potter (2001) on the signs an envelope iin your mailbox could be full of anthrax. Plus a digression on an earlier P.G.'s comic anti-smut crusade.

Notes and Credits

Why the big increase in scary terrorism warnings in late 2009? Is this a prelude to a fake "trigger incident," followed by a war on Syria or Iran? (Or is Venezuela the next on the list?)

Don't miss Postmaster Potter's unintentionally hilarious list of 7 warning signs of an envelope containing anthrax in your mailbox. One is, "It comes from someone you don't know or are not expecting to hear from." And goes downhill from there.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "first floor") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

This week's song

  • Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth

Coming Soon

  • February 9 -- The Top Ten
  • February 16 -- Not All Christians Are Evil!

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A note on the painting

"Whittling" was painted by (formerly local) artist David Weinholtz and published in our blog entry and newsletter for October 28, 2008--a week before the national election. A few words by me accompanied it:

Let's hope or pray that next year Whittling will require
updating, and the updating will require more than just
painting out the elephant and painting in a donkey.

So much for hoping and praying. What's left?

* Coda:

I just learned--after writing all of the above, and weeks after recording this program--that Howard Zinn died, at age 87, on January 27. For decades, Zinn has been a strong voice advocating democracy, justice, peace, . . . and the importance of learning history. His loss is a hard blow to us who share his values and to the great causes he struggled to advance. R.I.P.


Friday, January 22, 2010

Lenny Bruce and The Meaning of Obscenity



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 4 -- January 23, 2010


This Week in New World Notes, radio program #99, Jan. 26:

Lenny Bruce and
The Meaning of Obscenity

Pink-collar summary

"I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,"
-- Paul Simon, "A Simple, Desultory Philippic"

"This show is all about Lenny Bruce. Well, not just about Lenny. It's also about obscenity, American-style. Dirty words, oral sex, and the fatal stabbing of two women--one in Brentwood, one in the Bates Motel. All of the above, and Lenny Bruce too, are intricately connected."

Featuring a handful of Lenny's greatest routines, recorded 1963-64. (Sorry: no room this week for "Christ and Moses." Soon, though!)

OOPS!

Owing to technical difficulties--that's bureaucracy-speak for "I screwed up"--station WWUH in West Hartford, CT, was unable to air NWN #98 ("Cheap Junk and the Deindustrialization of America") last week. They did have #100, "Merchants of Fear," on hand and so played that. Next week, when the rest of the world is enjoying "Merchants of Fear," people in central Connecticut can settle for "Cheap Junk." Sorry 'bout that!

This week's songs

  • Incidental music: The Trashmen, Surfin' Bird
  • Outro: Supertramp, Goodbye, Stranger

Coming Soon

  • February 2 on WWUH -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • February 2 elsewhere -- Merchants of Fear

Nicole Brown Simpson, June 12, 1994. Click to enlarge.

What makes the photo especially sad, to me, is the riot of
green plants, blooming away in mindless vitality, quite unaware
of the dead woman at the bottom of the stairs. "Where the dogs
go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches
its innocent behind on a tree" (Auden,
Musee des Beaux Arts).
I hope somebody is watering them.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "long-suffering sighs") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

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Friday, January 15, 2010

Cheap Junk & The Deindustrialization of America



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 3 -- January 16, 2010

Annie Leonard (from NWN #48, "The Story of STUFF")

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #98, Jan. 19:

Cheap Junk and
The Deindustrialization of America

Workers' summary

We explore the connections among ubiquitous cheap junk merchandise, domestic unemployment and poverty, starvation wages abroad, pollution everywhere, the destruction of the environment, the deindustrialization and Third-World-ization of America, and the ever-increasing wealth of the already-rich. Was there a vote on all this that somehow I missed? Includes unflattering words on G.E. by labor leader Marie Lausch and an equally unflatttering discussion of IKEA from Ellen Ruppel Shell's book, Cheap: The High Price of Discount Culture.

Marie Lausch at UCONN, November 14, 2009

This week's song

  • Anne Feeney, Brave New Christmas

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • January 26 -- Lenny Bruce and the Meaning of Obscenity
  • February 2 -- Merchants of Fear (Installment #100!)

Ellen Ruppel Shell

Credits

  • Connecticut United Electrical Workers Union president Marie Lausch recorded by me at a symposium on converting Connecticut to a peacetime economy held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, November 14, 2009.
  • Shell passage as reprited by the Toronto Globe & Mail, July 19, 2009, condensed for radio by me.
  • New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "radar") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com

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Friday, January 8, 2010

The Kids Are All Right


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 2 -- January 9, 2010

This week's photos from the Copenhagen climate summit,
December 2009.

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #97, Jan. 12:

The Kids Are All Right

Workers' summary

To my surprise, young people today seem sharper, saner, more politically active, and more inspiring than several preceding "generations" of young'uns. Could there be hope for the future? We hear from George Carlin, trying & failing to sound like a pedophobe ... from Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco, two young women in high school who challenged Bush on torture ... and from journalist Johann Hari, reporting from the COP-15 climate conference, on the wisdom & courage of the young protesters.

This week's music (from the musical, Bye Bye Birdie, 1960):

  • The Telephone Hour
  • from Kids!
  • from Fine, Upstanding, ...

Coming Soon

  • January 19 -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • January 26 -- Lenny Bruce and the Meaning of Obscenity

Notes and credits

Johann Hari's article from Common Dreams online, December 16, 2009: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/16-5.

Amy Goodman's interview with Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco (July 3, 2007) courtesy of democracynow.org: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/3/we_do_not_want_america_to .

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "inflexible deadlines") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail dot com.


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Friday, January 1, 2010

Varieties of Sexual Experience


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 1 -- January 1, 2010

Screen capture from Perversion for Profit (1964). Links in text, below.

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #96, Jan. 5:

Varieties of Sexual Experience,
OR:

Goldberg's Other Variations

Workers' summary

This year's Annual Sex Show--okay, we skipped 2009--takes a lighthearted look at variations from the tried and true. Comedian Jimmy Tingle explains gays & homophobia. A 1964 documentary from the Citizens for Decent Literature--Perversion for Profit--exposes (so to speak) the Communist-inspired flood of filth peddled to our precious children from every newsstand in America. Speaking of children, social satirist Paul Krassner discusses how to respond when your 16-year-old daughter tells you that she's bid adieu to virginity. And Leonard Cohen again confuses an unfaithful girlfriend with the Collapse of Western Civilization.

Top: Charles Keating, anti-smut crusader and convicted swindler
(source: Thomas Ives/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).
Bottom: Boston landmark Jimmy Tingle

This week's songs

  • Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows
  • Robert Preston & chorus, from Ya Got Trouble

On Charles Keating and his Citizens for Decent Literature:

From Danny Gallagher, The Top 10 People Who Almost Destroyed Fun

  • The former face of the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal didn't spend his entire life trying to take the life savings of every man who walked into the scope of his view. He also spent part of it trying to take their pornography from them. The Cincinnati attorney formed the Citizens for Decent Literature in the late 1950s, an organization that used any legal recourse necessary to outlaw pornography in all of its forms. He even produced his own film, Perversion for Profit, that became a huge bestseller among disappointed men in trench coats.
    He not only failed to outlaw porno, but ended up in jail on charges of wire and bankruptcy fraud, where the term "Perversion for Profit" has more to do with earning cigarettes.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "very noses") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

http://www.jimmytingle.com/

Paul Krassner commissioned celebrated Mad Magazine cartoonist Wallace Wood to draw the most famous naughty cartoon of the 1960s, Disneyland Memorial Orgy. Krassner published the black-and-white drawing as the centerfold in his magazine, The Realist, in 1967. Portions of the drawing, which was subsequently colored, appear on the book cover shown, below. You'll find the complete colored version at the top of Krassner's Web page: http://www.paulkrassner.com/.

Download or listen online to NWN's previous Annual Sex Show (April 2008).

The show's words by Krassner are read from an interview published in CounterPunch, "Sex and Violins": http://www.counterpunch.org/krassner04092008.html

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Krassner's latest book (2009).

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