Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 184

TSA Agent Shot at LAX

Updates from top:  2:55 p.m. LA police chief Patrick Gannon: Shooter used assault rifle; shot lower level TSA agent, proceeded to upper TSA area, shot screeners.  Incident limited to that. 

Pete Williams at NBC just reported that one TSA agent dead.  Photo at left allegedly of AR-15 used on the floor.

Local medical center says 3 admitted, two "fair," one "critical."   KTLA anchor just now: “This person started shooting at lower level of T3, shot agent, walked right through to main terminal area to gate.” CBS with unconfirmed claim that shooter is "off-duty" TSA employee. Another: shooter is dead.  Another:  Young man, U.S. citizen, shouted in English.

NBC in L.A. says witnesses report 8 to 10 shots. Shooter in custody.  One witness describes as young man in short blond hair.  Police say incident "probably" over.  Bill Reiter of FoxSports was at scene and witnessed terrified chaos. He's tweeting @Foxsportsreiter.  "After the initial burst of gunfire and hiding, people started jumping over one another, jumping off chairs, pushing each other. Chaos & fear."   NBC's Pete Williams: Suspect pulled out rifle and shot document checker at TSA checkpoint. Large box of ammo found.

LA Times:  an agent shot at # LAX says “I got shot, I’m fine.” Says he's been shot before (presumably NOT at LAX).

CBS: suspect in camouflage outfit.  Witness says he asked him if he was TSA and he said no, so moved on.  Now the usual claim that may be 2nd gunman.  But doubtful. 

Classic actual tweet from Walter "Up in the Air" Kirn:  "About to land at LAX and see from the net there's some kind of shooting there."  Jeremy Scahill tweets: "Our flight just got diverted from LAX."

Earlier: 

Just happened at 12:30 ET.  Two terminals evacuated.  TSA agent shot in leg, another (or passenger) reportedly in the mouth, both taken to hospital.  Some confusion on others wounded or not.   Suspect reported wounded.   KTLA live coverage here.

Wild Lou Reed Interview

From Australia, 1974.  Spars with press on "gutter rock," "are you a transvestite or homosexual," dope.  Says he spends all his money on drugs--for other people.  And other yucks.  Also:  I may have edited Lou Reed's first piece--in 1971.

Attenborough on Mating Habits of the Miley Bird

Someone applied a classic David Attenborough nature narration of two odd birds mating to the Miley-Thicke routine.   Fun:

As Obama-Romney Race Gets New Attention: My E-Book

As you may have noticed, the new Halperin-Heileman book on the 2012 race is getting major attention today as details drift out, most notably Obama considering replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton as his running mate.   So it seems proper that I remind you that I produced the first book on the campaign, nearly a year ago, within three days of the close of the race--my ebook, Tricks, Lies and Videotape .   It charts the final months of the campaign day-by-day, and with hot links to hundreds of articles and videos.  So it's not only fun and revealing, but also a unique tool for reporters and historians.  Here's part of the Amazon write-up:

One of the most important political campaigns in recent history, the 2012 race for the White House set all sorts of records for fundraising, negative attacks and outright lying. Greg Mitchell, author of three acclaimed books on highly influential American political campaigns, followed the 2012 race as closely as anyone in his daily columns at The Nation and frequent posts at his popular Pressing Issues blog.

Now he has produced the first book to chronicle the showdown between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney right down to Election Night, and then the days after. It's a nearly day-by-day chronicle of the final 100 days of the race, with all the high points and low points, the soaring rhetoric and the low blows, the humor and the angry outrage.

"Tricks, Lies and Videotape" also includes this unique and extremely valuable feature: more than 500 clickable links to the key articles, videos, documents, and blog posts that drew national attention during the campaign. They're all here: from the secret Romney "47 percent video" to key newspaper columns (from Paul Krugman and Charles P. Pierce to David Brooks). All of the most outrageous attacks are here, plus Sarah Silverman and Lena Dunhamvideos, Bruce Springsteen broadsides and dozens of other unusual and fun campaign stuff. And you can enjoy watching Clint chat with the chair again.

You can click and read/view now, or months or years from now. It's a new kind of living history for journalists, activists and historians alike.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, including "The Campaign of the Century" (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize), on Upton Sinclair’s highly influential race for governor of California in 1934; "Why Obama Won," and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady" (on the infamous Nixon-Douglas race), a New York Times Notable Book. His other books include "Atomic Cover-Up," and with Robert Jay Lifton, "Hiroshima in America" and "Who Owns Death?"  Mitchell was the editor of Editor & Publisher ("the bible of the newspaper industry") from 2002 to 2009, and won nearly a dozen awards for its media coverage. Hundreds of his articles have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers and he has served as chief adviser for two award-winning documentaries.

Laurie Anderson Describes Lou's Last Days

Laurie Anderson, silent since the death of her husband Lou Reed, has spoken in the form of a note/obit in their local newspaper in their out-of-Manhattan home near East Hampton.  In full:

To our neighbors:

What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us.

Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home.

Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it!

Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.

Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.

— Laurie Anderson
his loving wife and eternal frienda

 Also re: Lou.  Did I edit his first published piece when I was at Crawdaddy?  Also:  My piece on when he underwent electroshock as a teen just over the hill from my home to drive out his "homosexual tendencies."

Roll Over, Beethoven: Our New Film Opens in NYC

Kerry Candaele's new film Following the Ninth (I am co-producer) had its sold-out NYC premiere at Lincoln Center  on Tuesday night.   The film now has a run for a full week at the Quad Cinema in the Village starting November 1.  I'll be appearing with Kerry this weekend at the 7 pm showings.  My friend Robert Jay Lifton appears November 2.  Tickets here.  See trailer below.

Reviews just appearing tonight.  Very positive review from New York Times just posted, and it will be on page 3 of the arts section tomorrow.  "Thrilling... all the film’s segments are smartly assembled and gracefully paced. Oh, and the score’s pretty good, too."

Just got a rave from the Village Voice.   "A majestic sonic travelogue... that rarest of films: a documentary as ineffable and transformative in its reach as it sets out to be."

Joan Walsh of Salon and MSNBC tweeted: "Saw 'Following the Ninth' last night at Lincoln Center, hits The Quad Friday,  go!" 

Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-winning director, tweeted last week,  "Hearing interesting things about 'Following the Ninth,' film about various uses of the Ludwig Van piece." The film drew raves from critics on the West Coast.

The film follows the Ninth Symphony and its enormous cultural and political influence around the world.  So we travel from Chile during the Pinochet years, to China's Tiananmen Square uprising,  to Japan (for the annual mass singing of the "Ode to Joy") and to Germany with Leonard Bernstein for the fall of the Wall, plus Billy Bragg re-writing the "Ode to Joy"--and playing it for the Queen.

I've also written a book with Kerry, now in print and e-book  editions:  Journeys With Beethoven: Following the Ninth , published by Sinclair Books. It's just $3.99 for the e-book and $10.99 for print.

You can write me at:  epic1934@aol.com.   Film opens in L.A. next month.  And here's Kerry's terrific trailer:

Other Ways to Look at New Obamacare Poll

 We're already reading the usual analysis and punditry on new NBC/WSJ poll--you know, that majority of folks want the ACA repealed or, gosh, revised.  That's feature in most of the headline and TV reports.  As usual, the details reveal results that could also be the top story if viewed in the same way.

For example: Alternative an accurate headline could be, "Despite problems, only 40% says they are 'less confident' in the new law."

By 37% to 31% the numbers show Americans  feel confident that the tech problems with the site will be straightened out soon.  The rest say it's too soon to say.  So pundits and headline writers could just as easily shout,  "only 31% hitting web site problems!"

Then there's this: just 24% want the ACA eliminated.  So your headline:  "76% reject repeal of Obamacare despite problems!"

Where Lou Reed Got Shocked

Yesterday I posted about just learning that the late Lou Reed once revealed that he had undergone shock therapy when he was teen because his parents wanted to drive his "homosexual tendencies"--this treatment happening just over the hill where I live, at the massive and now shuttered Rockland Psychiatric Center near Nyack, NY.   Lou later wrote a great song about it.

Allen Ginsberg also famously spent several months there before that.  He had met another well-known Beat, Carl Solomon, in 1949 in a similar facility and would later dedicate "Howl" to him.   Lou would become close to Ginsberg and the ex-Beats. 

Today I found an expansive site with dozens of photos of the site, equal parts creepy and striking (see note on blackboard), and I will probably takes some pix myself.  Read the comments there, some of them quite moving from former patients, though no mention of young Lou.  I am researching further on what went on there in 1950s, when Lou was there. For now, here's Ginsberg from "Howl," published possibly same year Lou was there.

Carl Solomon!  I’m with you in Rockland
where you’re madder than I am…
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void…
I’m with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

–Allen Ginsberg,   (1956)

Meet the Beatles' Fans

Amazing project by Ringo--he asked for someone to ID five early Beatles fans in his old photo at JFK Airport in New York--and now they've posed again in same positions, via the Today Show.  Some joke the sixth figure at right in shadows is...Pete Best.

The Missing My Lai Story

Everyone knows that most famous atrocity photo from Vietnam--the naked girl with napalm on her skin running down a road in terror.  Not long ago I posted here about an amazing update on the photo at the terrific site that focuses on news photos, Bag News Notes.  Now they've just posted an in-depth and important piece, by Valerie  Wieskamp, on another famous photo from the war--the one showing frightened villagers at My Lai just moments before getting gunned down by U.S. troops.

What this piece reveals is the largely "missing" story--that villagers were also raped or sexually brutalized just before the shootings.   One of them, in fact, is the young woman in the right rear of this photo, who is shown buttoning up her blouse.  The rapes were clearly documented at the time--by the photographer, a reporter, and later by the official commission--but downplayed by the media back then, and now almost always ignored when today's media revisit the tragedy.  Why? Especially with the image of a young woman re-buttoning her blouse.    There's much more in the piece, so read it now.