Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 16

Before You Watch the Rose Bowl...

Read this detailed summary just posted by VICE Sports based on the full transcript of the two-day hearing on the Winston rape case at FSU--and decide if you agree with judge that both sides an equal claim to the truth.  Remember that the judge only had to find the woman had 51% of the truth on her side to rule against the football star.  Site also has the full transcript, 214 pages.

Just One Hitch

New animated video of the late King of the Atheists, Christopher Hitchens, talking about the after-life.

Riot Going On

The Russian activists as you've never seen them before in new protest video...in advance of protests planned today after sentencing of anti-Putineer. 

Update:  He got a suspended sentence--but his brother was jailed.

John Oliver Roasts New Year's Eve

In You Tube special before show returns.

TV Series of the Year

Black Mirror, two seasons on Netflix (six shows), plus the Jon Hamm "Christmas Special" (hoo hoo), which you can find on YouTube.   And now Emily Nussbaum (I often disagree with her) has hailed it at The New Yorker.

The Band, 43 Years On

One of the epic live gigs ever opened tonight at NYC's Academy of Music in 1971, featuring The Band (plus Allen Toussaint leading the horn section).  And  I was there one night.  A box set appeared last year.  A highlight:

'Sniper' Shot Down?

Let me say quickly that I have not seen Eastwood's new American Sniper, but I have read a bunch of reviews and I get the drift.  Given the horrid number of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. gunmen one has to wonder how many of the record-setting victims of his marksmanship fell into that category--though not hinted at in the film, apparently. It even goes so far as to suggest that most of the were "al-Qaeda" which is absurd given the al-Qaeda numbers there--but it's necessary to emphasize the revenge-for-9/11 focus.  Also the film apparently does not raise questions about sniper Kyle's treatment idea for the PTSD vets he tried to aid--you know, take them to a firing range for fun (which led to his death).

In the book that inspired the film Kyle bragged that he e “hated the damn savages” he was fighting. He recounts telling an Army colonel, “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”   A New Yorker profile called him part lawman, part "executioner."

Finally, here is a Washington Post piece from a few months back looking at his post-Iraq lies or exaggerations and one has to wonder about his record in the war as well.    He claimed he climbed on top of the Superdown in NOLA and shot 30 bad guys from there after Katrina.  Killed a couple of others or more elsewhere.   Police and reporters can't find any of the dead.  Claimed he punched out Jesse Ventura in a bar--while Jesse was in a wheelchair, no less--and lost a million dollar lawsuit (since affirmed a couple of times since this article) for seemingly making it all up.  And so on. You won't see any of that in the Eastwood epilog.

Cocker and Friends + Dylan

From 1983, when Joe did Bob's rather obscure "7 Days" with Clapton and Woody and Charlie et al.

Nose to Nose With Joe Cocker

Joe Cocker was never a personal favorite, but still sad to hear about his untimely passing today at age 70.   Never saw him much in concert despite my my many years at Crawdaddy, but you may enjoy this anecdote, from my just-completed 1970s memoir, This Ain't No Disco.&
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Bruce Springsteen’s pal, Southside Johnny,  had just signed his own recording contract (with The Asbury Jukes), and I met two legends, Ronnie Spector and Lee Dorsey, when they cut songs with him in the studio, with Steve Van Zandt producing.  Joe Cocker happened to be trying to cut an album next door at the Record Plant. This led to one of the lowlights of my rock ‘n roll career.      The scene:  A long couch in a corridor between the two studios.  I sat down on the far left as you face it.  Then Cocker and famed session drummer Bernard Purdie joined me, with Joe in the middle.  Joe appeared drunk or stoned, his hair a mop.   Purdie told him, flatly, “Joe, you’re a mess.”  Cocker replied, “I’m all right.”  Purdie: “You’ve been ‘all right’ for years.”  One couldn’t  help but recall that one of Joe’s earliest hits was “Feelin’ All Right.”   With that, Cocker,  perhaps forgetting I was there (giving him the benefit of the doubt), turned straight ahead, placed a finger at one side of his nose—and snotted lustily out of the nostril facing me, sending a trail of mucus onto my pants leg.   Just another day at the office, so Joe just got up and walked away.  I recalled that classic line from Love’s Forever Changes lp: “Oh the snot is caked against my pants...”      This was balanced, somewhat, by watching at close range the elfin Dorsey croak out a Van Zandt tune,  “How Come You Treat Me So Bad?”, with Steve, behind the mixing board, screaming at the end, “I think I’m going to die!”  Dorsey, the voice behind “Working in a Coal Mine” and so many other New Orleans classics, told me he hadn’t been in a studio for three years and recently sold his bar in NOLA after getting held up one too many times.  Now he was running a body shop with his son—and just the day before had found someone under the hood of one of the cars, trying to swipe a battery.       “Next legend!” Van Zandt ordered, and soon Ronnie Spector waltzed through the door.  Still her foxy self, Ronnie (now separated from crazy husband Phil) arrived in painted-on jeans, suspenders and a tight red t-shirt.  Apparently she was coaxed into the studio because the track, “You Mean So Much to Me,” was written by Springsteen.  Bruce was tinkling the ivories when she walked up and introduced herself. Seemingly overwhelmed, he didn’t say a word to her the rest of the night.        By now, Joe Cocker had staggered down the hall to watch.  After a terrific first take, Steve announced, “We still need some whoah-oh-ohs at the beginning.”   Ronnie replied: “I know whoa-oh-ohs.” An understatement. “Whoa-oh-ohs are my life.”  When they recorded the take she threw in a “sock it to me,” sending Springsteen into convulsions.       Watching Ronnie, Steve and Southside huddled around the piano, I asked Bruce if he’d ever imagined that he’d one day survey this tableau.  “Nowadays,” he answered with a chuckle, “I believe anything.” 

'NYT' Still Bowing to U.S. Requests

The NYT's excellent public editor Margaret Sullivan with a new column on one of her pet, and most important, topics:  the paper in the past caving to U.S. officials asking or demanding that they kill stories for alleged national security reasons.   Of course, editors now admit they were too weak in the past--although Bill Keller, one of the worst, is still trying to stand tall while the overpraised Jill Abramson admits they were "naive."  There's more to be said but for now two more things:

1)  Sullivan failed to follow-up on current editor Dean Baquet saying that, yes, the paper is  now acting "much, much" tougher, noting hardly a month goes by that he does not get a serious request to hold or kill a piece.  How often does he cave? No, not never, but "rarely."  Sullivan does not press him on how rare or what is involved or why or what.

2)  There's another amazing loose end as well.  That recent claim by James Risen that the Times succumbed to U.S. pressure in 2002 to hold for a year his story on an al-Qaeda figure we held in Thailand?  No one remembers signing off on it--not former editor Howell Raines nor publisher Arthur Sulzberger and D.C. chief Abramson.  Is it possible that managing ed. Gerald Boyd--like Raines, disgraced in the Jayson Blair affair--made the decision on his own while Raines was away?  And never told anyone? Seems very unlikely.  Or a mind-boggling step by a managing ed.