Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Okay, kids, today we are going to discuss the differences between being a shill and being a tool. Wikitionary has a couple of definitions for "shill" : A person paid to endorse a product favorably, while pretending to be impartial. An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game. I was in advertising for years -- I am (sad to say) well acquainted with the art and science of shilling. A classic example: back in the day, my then employer had as a client a very large brewery, which I shall call "A-B." When a proposal to require a 5 cent deposit on non-returnable bottles appeared as a referendum item on the Oregon ballot one election year, A-B took a very dim view, since they were a major producer of non-returnable bottles. Their response? They set up and bankrolled some phony grassroots committee ( "Citizens for Sensible Packaging" or some such bullshit) to oppose the measure. This is now referred to as "astro-turfing. A-...

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Jeff Beck proves he has no shame. And I mean that in the best possible way imaginable. His new album Rock 'n' Roll Party is subtitled "Honoring Les Paul," and it's like attending a freaking guitar seance.  I mean to say there are tracks that will give you chills. For starters, there's How High the Moon, a Les Paul / Mary Ford standard. The Mary Ford part is filled with scary enough accuracy by Imelda May but the signature guitar riff will have you convinced the Godfather of the Electric Guitar has come back from the dead. After listening to Jeff Beck's track, check out this live performance by the late Mr. Paul and tell me I'm wrong. And the Beck track, while dead on, is bursting with manic rockstar energy. There are other Paul standards also lovingly reconstructed with the aid of Imelda May. Even though most of the album is heavy on rockabilly vibe, the senses tingle when Beck's personalit...

Normally I don't care a fig about the Superbowl. Many's the time I don't actually know who's playing in it. Of late I'll learn just enough about the outcome to avoid appearing a complete dunce in post-game office discussions. This year is different the game will be played in Jerry Jones' new monstrosity in Arlington, Texas. By way of illustration of the afore-mentioned Mr. Jones' ego, he's charging people $200 to watch the game on monitors in the stadium parking lot, and calling it the "Superbowl Experience." He's also going to include these pathetic dupes in the headcount for attendance. This week, North Texas (as with much of the country) has been hit with crushing snow storms and low temperatures. The electric companies have dropped the ball and had to enforce rolling blackouts to households because demand exceeded capacity. Thursday night I flew in to DFW after a business trip and the pilot circled past Cowboy stadium -- all lit...

This just in from several sources: Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, failed vice-presidential candidate, political pundit and reality television star, is attempting to trademark herself . No, I am not kidding you. Reuters helpfully points out , "Legal experts said it is relatively unusual for politicians to formally trademark their names because they are generally not associated with commercially valuable products or services." That has to be the money quote for the day. Mainstream Republicans everywhere are probably heaving sighs of relief everywhere since this can be taken as a sign that Sarah Palin the former governor of Alaska has privately concluded she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, much less a shot at actually getting elected. Henceforth all speaking, campaigning, prophesying and general self-promotion should now be considered commercial activity, not political. While it's doubtful that S...

Can I be frank? What the hell were you thinking when you elected Michele Bachmann? It's not clear whether she's a lying sociopath or just a freaking idiot (or both) -- based on the fact that she got a J.D. degree and managed to pass the bar exam I'm inclined to lean towards sociopath -- but seriously, she's an embarrassment to you. Or should be. I'll ignore for the moment her promotion of creationism in public schools, her statement that "our children... are the prize for [the gay] community, they are specifically targeting our children," and other run of the mill right-wing nonsense she routinely spouts. Instead just look at her recent speech in Iowa where she shares the alternate reality in which she lives : Apparently in this other universe, our founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery instead of actually owning slaves. It's pretty bad when John McCain's daughter calls you a " poor man's Sarah Palin ." Ouch. Now dow...

Much has been said by some of my Libertarian friends about Al Gore's career as a shill for the global-warming crowd after losing the 2000 election to George W Bush. Let's take a look at what Bob Barr, our latest losing Libertarian candidate for president, is doing now. CNN has a story today about former Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who wants to use $5.7 million in frozen Swiss bank accounts belonging to a "family foundation" to help rebuild Haiti. Baby Doc, in case your Haitian history is a little rusty, inherited the position of President from his late father, "Papa Doc," in 1971 and held it for 15 years until his countrymen threw him out. While marginally better than Papa Doc, Baby Doc lived like a playboy, looted the struggling nation's treasury, and allowed his father's cronies to continue to run the country. Under his rule thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured. Now representing the Former President of Haiti is For...

Full disclosure: I've had a Yahoo! account for well over 10 years. Yahoo got its start as "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" only to be later renamed as Yahoo! by its creators, Jerry Yang and David Filo , a couple of Stanford grad students.  While  "Yahoo" was backronymed to stand for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," Yang and Filo admitted they were drawn to the earlier meaning of the word, coined by Jonathan Swift . In his satiric novel Gulliver's Travels , Swift describes a race called " Yahoos " as savage and filthy, obsessed with "pretty stones." The term has come to mean a crude, thuggish uncultured yokel. Want an example?  You need look no further than any random sampling of reader comments from pretty much any news story posted on the Yahoo portal, especially something like this weekend's shooting of a Member of Congress. The level of discourse to be found makes schoolyard brawl...