Tag Archives: Greed

The #45 Mix Tape

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Then candidate 45 hugging US flag at campaign rally (remember, he’s the anti-Midas, everything he touches turns to crap), Tampa, FL, June 11, 2016. (Chris O’Meara/AP, Times Free Press).

I’m changing it up a bit this weekend. With so much focus on the apocalypse that is 45 and his band of greedy, racist, misogynistic, Islamophobia, and Russia-helping yes-men, I have something goofy and meaningful to say. There are already several comprehensive syllabi on Donald J. Trump out, though, so adding my scholarly musings and sources to this almost inexhaustible topic would be a futile exercise. Instead, I have a mix tape (sort of), one that highlights the changes in my music tastes over time and a group of songs that I mostly despise. Just like I loath most of America’s knee-jerk arguments over 45 and his minions from the past two years.

1. “Little Lies” (Fleetwood Mac, 1987). From their Tango In The Night album. Christine McVie sounds like a shot dog on this song (and Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t sound much better). But this was a Top-5 hit on Billboard in 1987, around the same time Trump was likely being turned by Vladimir Putin and the KGB in the former USSR. And, the song’s theme is pretty obvious.

2. “Live to Tell” (Madonna, 1986). Not exactly my favorite artist, but a one-time favorite song from the one-time “Material Girl” for me three decades ago. After several sources quoting the deposed Michael Flynn, “he has a story to tell,” I remembered Madonna’s lyrics, “I have a tale to tell.” Come to think of it, doesn’t Jared Kushner have a tale to tell about his and 45’s “thousand lies?”

3. “Spies Like Us” (Paul McCartney, 1985-86). Proof positive that Baby Boomers will vote for anything, this piece of poop was a Top-10 hit in January 1986. It’s also emblematic of the theme of ineptitude and macabre humor that runs through the song, representing the movie by the same title, and Flynn, Kushner, Carter Page, Roger Stone, and the rest of the monolithic bloc of 45’s White men.

4. “Russians” (Sting, 1985-86). Why? Because Russians (maybe with the exception of Josef Stalin and Putin) “love their children too” — didn’t you know? But they love messing with our corrupt democracy even more.

5. “Oops!…I Did It Again” (Britney Spears, 2000). God, I have no idea why anyone would’ve ever liked this zit-popper. But the then-eighteen-year-old Spears was prescient with the line “I’m not that innocent.” Neither is 45. He made be a narcissistic buffoon who can’t put two coherent sentences together with a pen, two pieces of paper, Scotch tape, and a flashlight. But he knows where his money’s coming from, no?

6. “Just A Friend” (really, “Jus’ a Friend,” Biz Markie, 1989-90). Same theme as Britney Spears’, with a twist of crossover appeal, a ridiculous baroque get-up, and off-key singing that could only be topped by NBA Hall-of-Famer (and internalized racist) Charles Barkley. But it captures perfectly the love affair between ditto-headed supremacist Americans and 45 (it doesn’t go the other way, of course).

7. “White, Discussion” (Live, 1994). A bit of my favorite grunge, which I have used before. It applies to the folks, the so-called American liberals ready to blame non-voters, third-party voters, and Trump supporters for the rise of 45. Still, many of them are to blame also, because most of them aren’t liberal. If you supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 based on principles, and not out of pragmatism, you are not a liberal, and have been voting in center-right candidates for decades. As the song goes, “look where all this talking got us, baby.”

8. “Stranger In Moscow” (Michael Jackson, 1996-97). Jackson’s introspective song applies here as well, because, well, he uses Russia and the theme of isolation throughout. Except in 45’s case, he likes it that way. And apparently, so does Russia.

9. “Lies” (En Vogue, 1990). Trust me, it fits! (s/o to Dawn Robinson).

10. “Thug Paradise” (Capone-N-Noreaga/Tragedy Khadafi, 1997). The lyrics below say it all:

I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant and revel in my pain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician, and I decide your fate

Supporters and sycophants beware: 45 is coming for you, in a steamroller with a 700-horsepower engine going one hundred.

11. “Fake Love” (Drake, 2017). I’m a Aubrey Graham fan. I can’t stand Drake. Still, this release from More Life should be required listening from 45 supporters who think they’re not racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, or narcissistic. He also has a song on this album titled “Portland,” though I seriously doubt he was thinking about this weekend or Richard Collins III.

12. “Waterfalls” (TLC, 1995). Yep, yep, yep. Both 45 and MAGA-types have been chasing illusory rainbows and torrents off jagged edges, and damning everyone who they perceive as a threat along the way. And they’re both on a one-way trip.

13. “Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone” (Glass Tiger, 1986). This is the song 45 should play whenever he finally leaves office, whether by resignation, impeachment, and/or force. As everything 45 touches turns into crap, Glass Tiger’s Top-10 schlock cannot be made any worse. Plus, not even Glass Tiger would complain about 45 using their crappy music.

14. (Bonus Track) “No Bravery” (James Blunt, 2006). 45 is part of a continuum, one that stretches through all of American history. On the international stage, though, it has been one of constant chest-thumping while killing innocents in the name of freedom or national security. Though Blunt’s was about fighting for the UK, the song has much more applicability in the US. We have so much blood on our hands, and 45 means to add to this fetid river on the domestic and international frThe #45 Mix Tapeonts.

Another Day In Paradise

17 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by in 1, Eclectic, music, Politics, Pop Culture

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Source: Virgin, Atlantic, WEA. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic.

A little more than twenty years ago, Phil Collins (no relation) released the first song from his …But Seriously album, “Another Day In Paradise.” In the context of the times, it was part of a series of pop music songs that sought to arouse a social justice consciousness in the late-’80s, to stem the “Greed is good” culture that had evolved during the Reagan Years. Though overwrought and a bit like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer, “Another Day In Paradise” — a song about homelessness in America — was the final #1 hit of the ’80s, and the first one of the ’90s as well.

That song has as much relevance today as it did twenty and a half years ago, and not just with the issue of homelessness. The current BP oil deluge crisis, the manipulation of the housing market, our growing personal and national debt, even the tampering with our food by corporate giants like Tyson, Monsanto, and Con-Agra. All fall into the paradigm of a society faced with ills of its own making yet in nearly complete ignorance of its own participation in these disasters. Our addiction to oil is stronger than any individual’s addiction to crack cocaine or crystal meth. The housing market and our net debtor status reflects greed run amok and nearing the speed of light. And the food crisis — with the obesity and health crisis it has created — is an indication that our narcissism and greed knows no bounds.

Progressives and others on the left — people even more left than me — tend to act as if these corporations aren’t affected by their own evil decisions and policies, that the ills that they have created will only affect our adult children and grandchildren. In fact, that’s how our representatives in government talk as well. But, as we are seeing with the pictures of oil and mud-soaked pelicans and turtles, that’s simply not true. What’s been happening to our environment, energy, food and economy affects all of us, rich and poor, now, not in twenty or fifty years, but now.

The rich can and do clean up the crap that affects us all better than we can because they have the money to do so. But they still breathe the same polluted air, eat the same GMO foodstuffs — especially if they run Monsanto and Con-Agra — and drink the same contaminated water that we drink. They’re just too rich and ignorant to realize that we’re all in the same rickety boat, and that with each windfall profit, their putting the nails in their own coffins too.

The lyrics to Phil Collins’ song go something like this at the end:

You can tell from the lines on her face
You see that she’s been there
Probably been moved on from every place
Cause she didn’t fit in there

Except the “she” in the way I see these lyrics today isn’t a homeless woman. It’s the riches of our planet, as we rape and torture it into what we hope is submission, ignoring the signs that the consequences for our greed are already too high for us to pay. Our paradise world has already been turned into a living hell for millions all over the world — from half-century-long oil spills in Nigeria (see In Nigeria, Oil Spills Are a Longtime Scourge – NYTimes.com ) to the half a million victims of the Union Carbide toxic gas leak in Bhopal, India in ’84. With Katrina in ’05 and this BP disaster this year, maybe this is only our procrastination, incompetence, narcissism and greed chickens coming home to roost.