Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 47
August 28, 2014
Till and Dylan
On this day in 1955: the death of Emmet Till. Young Bob Dylan penned song about it.
Benedict Cumberbatch IS Vincent Van Gogh
Was not aware of this recent docudrama until tonight--and it's based on the artist's letters to his brother. Van Gogh was like Babe Ruth. The Babe was known for his hitting but he also might have made the Hall of Fame as a pitcher. With Van Gogh it was images--and writing.
A Bridge Too Far: Cuomo Steals Money for Environment
August 28, 2014: Read this scathing piece at my local paper, the Journal News of Westchester/Rockland, N.Y. The NYT earlier this week refused to endorse Gov. Cuomo for re-election due to various "corruption" angles but far worse, in my view, was his ramming through of the long-delayed (for good reason) building of a new Tappan Zee Bridge across the Hudson. It's now the biggest highway/bridge project in the country--thecurrent span is three miles long and less than 60 years old--and besides not promising much of a gain in speed of traffic, it includes no mass transit and the state has lied left and right about likely massive toll increases. Taking the cake, as you'll see in article, is the governor's successful storng-arm push to drain hundreds of millions in dollars for environmental projects and direct them for the bridge--where financing (beyond soaking commuters) has never been place. Cuomo pushed the project through anyway. Now it can only be paid for by raiding funds for much-needed new treatment plants etc.--and doubling tolls. (h/t Barbara Bedway)June 2014: Latest scandal surrounding biggest construction project in U.S.--building the new three-mile-long Tappan Zee Bridge, just down the hill. Cuomo and state rammed through the project hurriedly with little funding in place--beyond danger of tripling current bridge tolls. Now they've gotten a state board to approve an outrageous $511 loan from key fund meant for environmental clean-up and much-needed new sewers. No public comments allow earlier or today. See complaints by environmental groups and EPA regional chief. And local residents being subjected to ear- and nerve-shattering noise.
Not 'Daily'--But One for the Ages?
First commentary I've seen on Jon Stewart's first directorial effort, Rosewater (not the Kurt Vonnegut book). "Ahead of its festival tour, the film screened last night for select critics. First reviews, which don't exactly portend unanimous acclaim, are up. Some critics wonder how the film would be received if the director were an unknown rather than a media celebrity whom everyone, especially Hollywood, adores." Variety raves but others mixed, such as: "The film understandably sets aside Stewart's trademark barbed humor in a story that needs to be told without mockery or laughs, and it's also more earnest than Stewart's TV fans might expect. And for much of its running time the film is not quite as sharp or energetic as you'd hope, possibly because Stewart the director is hardly the master the way Stewart the TV host is."
Trailer just out today:
Trailer just out today:
They Had Me at 'Buddy Holly'
Trailer for sci-fi TV series starring Napoleon Dynamite guy...it's been "in development for awhile" and still not aired...And here's my own fictional tribute to Dylan and The Band.
Sail On, Ray
Yes, Ray Charles once sang the Beach Boys' "Sail on Sailor," live.
Before the Basement
Brendan Behan sings his brother's classic Irish tune "The Auld Triangle," which believe it or not Dylan and the Band do wonderfully on the unreleased Basement Tapes about to come out in November.
August 27, 2014
Famous Day in August 28 History: The Chicago 'Police Riot'
Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the turning point March on Washington. But, in my life, today also marks another important and influential day: 45 years ago tonight the infamous "police riot" near the Democratic Convention in Chicago took place. I was too young for the King march--but old enough to journey to Chicago for that brutal week in 1968. Here's a piece I wrote not long along ago about how I witnessed that at close hand.
***
Forty-five years ago my trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention would culminate in the crushing of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam crusade inside the convention hall and the cracking of peacenik skulls by Mayor Richard Daley's police in the streets. Together, this doomed Hubert Humphrey to defeat in November at the hands of Richard Nixon.
I'd been a political-campaign junkie all my life. At the age of 8, I paraded in front of my boyhood home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., waving an "I Like Ike" sign. In 1968 I got to cover my first presidential campaign when one of Sen. McCarthy's nephews came to town, before the state primary, and I interviewed him for the Niagara Falls Gazette, where I worked as a summer reporter during college. I had been chair of the McCarthy campaign at my college. So much for non-biased reporting!
My mentor at the Gazette was a young, irreverent City Hall reporter named John Hanchette. He went on to an illustrious career at other papers, and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for Gannett News Service. Hanchette was in Chicago that week to cover party politics as a Gazette reporter and contributor to the Gannett News Service (GNS). I was to hang out with the young McCarthyites and the anti-war protesters. To get to Chicago I took my first ride on a jetliner.
To make a long story short: On the climactic night of Aug. 28, 1968, Hanchette and I ended up just floors apart in the same building: the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was in McCarthy headquarters and Hanchette was in one of Gannett's makeshift newsrooms. Just after the peace plank to the DNC platform was defeated, TV coverage switched to shocking scenes of young folks getting beaten with nightsticks on the streets of Chicago, but we didn't know where. Then we smelled tear gas and someone the curtains along a wall of windows and we looked out to see police savagely attacking protesters with nightsticks at the intersection directly below.
Soon I headed for the streets. By that time, the peak violence had passed, but cops were still pushing reporters and other innocent bystanders through plate glass windows at the front of the hotel. I held back in the lobby, where someone had set off a stink bomb. Some Democrats started returning from the convention hall -- after giving Humphrey the nomination even though McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy won most of the primaries -- as protesters inside the Hilton chanted, "You killed the party! You killed the party!" And: "You killed the country." And, of course, "Dump the Hump!"
Finally, I screwed up my courage and crossed to Grant Park where the angry protest crowd gathered. And there I stayed all night, as the crowd and chants of "pig" directed at the cops increased. Many in the crowd wore bandages of had fresh blood on their faces. Phil Ochs (later a friend) arrived and sang, along with other notables, including some of the peacenik delegates. Cops lined the park -- backed up by jeeps with machines guns pointed at us. Yes, that happened.
When I returned to Niagara Falls that Friday, I wrote a column for that Sunday's paper. I described the eerie feeling of sitting in Grant Park, and thousands around me yelling at the soldiers and the media, "The whole world is watching!" -- and knowing that, for once, it was true.
More than 35 years later, after I had written two books on other infamous political campaigns, I returned to Chicago for a staged performance of a musical based on one of them. As I got out of a cab to make my way to the theater, I had an eerie feeling and, sure enough, looking up the street I noticed Grant Park a block away -- and the very intersection in front of the Hilton where skulls were cracked that night in 1968.
P.S. Norman Mailer's terrific book, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is still in print.
***
Forty-five years ago my trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention would culminate in the crushing of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam crusade inside the convention hall and the cracking of peacenik skulls by Mayor Richard Daley's police in the streets. Together, this doomed Hubert Humphrey to defeat in November at the hands of Richard Nixon.
I'd been a political-campaign junkie all my life. At the age of 8, I paraded in front of my boyhood home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., waving an "I Like Ike" sign. In 1968 I got to cover my first presidential campaign when one of Sen. McCarthy's nephews came to town, before the state primary, and I interviewed him for the Niagara Falls Gazette, where I worked as a summer reporter during college. I had been chair of the McCarthy campaign at my college. So much for non-biased reporting!
My mentor at the Gazette was a young, irreverent City Hall reporter named John Hanchette. He went on to an illustrious career at other papers, and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for Gannett News Service. Hanchette was in Chicago that week to cover party politics as a Gazette reporter and contributor to the Gannett News Service (GNS). I was to hang out with the young McCarthyites and the anti-war protesters. To get to Chicago I took my first ride on a jetliner.To make a long story short: On the climactic night of Aug. 28, 1968, Hanchette and I ended up just floors apart in the same building: the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was in McCarthy headquarters and Hanchette was in one of Gannett's makeshift newsrooms. Just after the peace plank to the DNC platform was defeated, TV coverage switched to shocking scenes of young folks getting beaten with nightsticks on the streets of Chicago, but we didn't know where. Then we smelled tear gas and someone the curtains along a wall of windows and we looked out to see police savagely attacking protesters with nightsticks at the intersection directly below.
Soon I headed for the streets. By that time, the peak violence had passed, but cops were still pushing reporters and other innocent bystanders through plate glass windows at the front of the hotel. I held back in the lobby, where someone had set off a stink bomb. Some Democrats started returning from the convention hall -- after giving Humphrey the nomination even though McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy won most of the primaries -- as protesters inside the Hilton chanted, "You killed the party! You killed the party!" And: "You killed the country." And, of course, "Dump the Hump!"
Finally, I screwed up my courage and crossed to Grant Park where the angry protest crowd gathered. And there I stayed all night, as the crowd and chants of "pig" directed at the cops increased. Many in the crowd wore bandages of had fresh blood on their faces. Phil Ochs (later a friend) arrived and sang, along with other notables, including some of the peacenik delegates. Cops lined the park -- backed up by jeeps with machines guns pointed at us. Yes, that happened.
When I returned to Niagara Falls that Friday, I wrote a column for that Sunday's paper. I described the eerie feeling of sitting in Grant Park, and thousands around me yelling at the soldiers and the media, "The whole world is watching!" -- and knowing that, for once, it was true.
More than 35 years later, after I had written two books on other infamous political campaigns, I returned to Chicago for a staged performance of a musical based on one of them. As I got out of a cab to make my way to the theater, I had an eerie feeling and, sure enough, looking up the street I noticed Grant Park a block away -- and the very intersection in front of the Hilton where skulls were cracked that night in 1968.
P.S. Norman Mailer's terrific book, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is still in print.
Girl Survives Suicide Leap
This is sad but amazing. I know this fairly small, if scenic, bridge well as it's just a bit up the Hudson. Terrible that a girl only 16 would attempt suicide. Wonderful that she somehow survived after falling 153 feet--a first, according to local responders. But see story for mention of others who did not survive in past year, including a couple of key IBM inventors.
Beheading for Trouble
The U.S. seems about to go to war in Syria, sparked partly by the beheading of one journalist. Yet we are cozy as can be with the Saudis, who have approved the beheading of 19 just this month, as Human Rights Watch points out.
Human Rights Watch reports that Saudi Arabia has beheaded 19 people since the beginning of August. Some confessions may have been gained under torture and one poor defendant was found guilty of sorcery. Yep, sorcery. . Sandy, Linda and Elaine have been proscribed for cultural reasons (seriously).
Of course, it’s difficult for the West to condemn a country for a liberal use of the death penalty when America does the same all the time. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia’s sudden bump in executions is a reminder of just how strange an ally they are for democracies. Ed West recently produced a masterful blog post asking why the Saudis were so worried about Isil given that the warlords of Iraq have an awful lot in common with the princes of the Kingdom.
