Month: April 2010

Charlie Vergos

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date April 1, 2010

“Vance Lauderdale,” who for years in the Flyer and in our sister publication, Memphis magazine, has served as the ultimate chronicler of Memphis institutions, put it succinctly on Sunday: “Charlie Vergos, who turned a cluttery

barbecue restaurant tucked away in a downtown alley into a Memphis — no, I’d say a national — institution, passed away this week.”

Just how national was indicated by the attention paid this innovative restaurateur after his passing — in The New York Times, for example, which eulogized the late barbecue king, the child of Greek immigrants, as the inventor and perfecter of the “dry rub” style of barbecue and as an entrepreneur par excellence, whose delectable wares made the Rendezvous Restaurant truly world-famous.

Many are the celebrities who have insisted on a stop by the Rendezvous over the years to munch down on some dry ribs, and many, too, are the venues and occasions, at home and abroad, to which Rendezvous ribs and barbecue sandwiches have been transported by special request.

Many, too, we would hazard, are the deals that were consummated during the Rendezvous’ famous Friday lunch hour, and we know for sure of couples whose resolve to tie the knot was enhanced by comfortable evenings in the subterranean confines of the original Rendezvous in the alley called November 6, 1934, as well as in the current building in another alley a block away.

What was unique about the personable Mr. Vergos is that his best memorials are not in granite or in print but are served daily and can be savored in present tense as well as in memory. He will be missed.

On Public Decorum

Given the possibility that a political race or two this year may further exacerbate tensions that already exist in the community at large, we subscribe to a sentiment expressed in Monday’s unusually contentious public meeting of the Shelby County Commission by Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who took note of “the tone of the debate” during a heated discussion concerning the potential sale of surplus property on Lamar Avenue. “On all sides of the debate, people have been getting nasty,” Mulroy said, “I’m going to ask that we just stick to the merits.”

In reality, Mulroy understated the case. Monday’s acrimony stemmed largely from undercurrents of racial sensitivity which were made overt by Commissioner Henri Brooks, an African-American member who sees herself as a champion of her community, and may well be. However, Brooks’ suspicions regarding race-based double-dealing in the property matter and another matter, that of the availability of preparedness training, were exaggerated in our view.

Insensitivy and over-sensitivity are two edges of the same sword, of course, and undoubtedly the best way of avoiding both, on the commission and on the equally volatile City Council, is indeed to “just stick to the merits” of an argument.

Opinion Viewpoint

United States of Japan

Post author By Richard Cohen
Post date April 1, 2010

Mitch McConnell is right. The Republican Senate leader, a man whose vision is to deny others theirs, told The New York Times that President Obama’s health-care proposal was part of an attempt to “turn us into a Western European country,” which, the good Lord willing, is what will now happen.

I, for one, could use a dash of Germany, where there are something like 200 private health insurance plans and where everyone is covered and no one goes broke on account of bad health. It’s great to be healthy in America, but for too many Americans, it’s better to be sick somewhere else.

I would also take France or Switzerland, but mostly I’d like Japan, where medical care is as good (or better) than it is here and much less expensive. What all these countries have in common is the recognition that health care, like food or education, is a universal right. The United States, to McConnell’s evident chagrin, is now moving this way.

Do not underestimate the importance of last week’s House vote. It was momentous, and it will not be repealed by the results of the November elections. Just as, against the hopes and insistence of the GOP, America did not reverse Social Security or Medicaid. The worth of these programs became evident, and thus they became politically sacrosanct.

When Americans figure out that insurance companies can no longer deny them coverage because, as it happens, they urgently need it, and when they discover that their kids can remain covered until age 26, and when they can for the first time afford health insurance themselves, this law will become untouchable. Self-interest usually trumps ideology.

This battle was never entirely about health care. The fury of the opposition — not a single Republican vote — is as historically significant as the passage of the legislation itself. There is something cleaving this country, something represented by the election of Barack Obama — the change he either promised or threatened, take your pick — and the hyper-exaggeration of the ideological threat the man represented. Caricatured as a socialist, a radical, a hard-left liberal, and even an alien, he is actually the very soul of center-left moderation, cautious to a fault.

It is the same with the health-care package itself. Whatever it is, it is not socialism. For all the fulminations about the American free enterprise system, private insurance companies are retained. The government will not do what governments all over the world do — provide either health insurance or health care itself. Does the legislation provide for a government role? Yes. But there is a government role in virtually everything — or haven’t you noticed the tag on your pillow?

The reason this fight took so long is that the culture is about evenly divided. It’s not that the political system is broken. On the contrary, it’s not supposed to work without consensus. It did as designed — marched in place and bided its time until Sunday, when it moved just a bit. Consider how long it has taken. Harry Truman wanted this bill.

Anger comes from fear. What was once a white Protestant nation is changing hue and religion. It is no accident that racial epithets were yelled at black lawmakers on Saturday in Washington and a kind of venom even gets exclaimed from the floor of the Congress: “You lie!” “Baby killer!” The protesters were protesting health-care legislation. But they fear they are losing their country.

Ever since the New Deal, the GOP has been the Party of the Past. It said no to the New Deal. It said no to Social Security. Important leaders — Barry Goldwater, for instance — said no to civil rights, as they now are saying no to gay rights. The party plays the role of the scold, the finger-wagger who warns of this or that dire outcome — not all of it wrong — and then gets bypassed by progress. The GOP then picks itself up and resumes its fight against the next innovation. Usually, it wins some battles; usually, it loses the war.

McConnell had his point. Europe is way ahead of us in compassion for the sick. Its systems, though, are hardly perfect, and government debt is always a concern. Still, we know which way we are going. The culture wars will continue, but the outcome, Mitch, is no longer in doubt.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

We Recommend We Recommend

Girl Talk

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 1, 2010

Amy Wilson, the 36-year-old Yale-trained artist whose solo exhibition “The Space Between Us” opened last week at the University Museum on the University of Mississippi campus, has returned home to Jersey City, but her recent travels in the South have made an impression.

“The trip has really provoked a lot of thoughts in my head about insider vs. outsider art, art vs. craft, and small towns vs. the big city,” Wilson writes on her personal blog. “The upshot is, I’m more confused than ever.” Another upshot is that the ideas in Wilson’s head very often find their way into her acclaimed compositions, which typically take the shape of small-scale watercolors featuring images of talkative girls and massive amounts of text.

Wilson, whose images are often described (in a positive sense) as naive, says her work is a kind of self-portraiture. She likes to explore the tension that exists between her interior world and the exterior one by sharing personal stories. Although the work on display at Ole Miss does depict some of her famous chatty Cathys, much of it is a departure. I Remember Swimming in the Lake at Night in the Summertime depicts a mysterious landscape where a river pours into a lake in the middle of a forest beneath a vast sky where constellations are composed of hundreds of tiny people. Other works seem to be illustrations that escaped from an unwritten children’s book, where young girls confront ladders to nowhere or become bound up in giant, terrifying spider webs.

“The Space Between Us” is a wordy place where impressionism meets childhood fantasies and phantasmagoria. It’s on display at the University Museum in Oxford through June 12th.

Music Music Features

Different Directions

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 1, 2010

Last year, the North Mississippi Allstars’ Luther Dickinson joined the Black Crowes as a hired-gun guitar player. This year, another nationally known band has plucked another Memphis guitarslinger to boost their sound.

Steve Selvidge — who got his start as co-frontman for the beloved ’90s-era local band Big Ass Truck and has most recently been playing with Antenna Shoes and Amy LaVere — has joined up with popular Brooklyn-based indie band The Hold Steady, whose fifth studio album, Heaven Is Whenever, is set for a May 4th release.

Selvidge’s relationship with the Hold Steady — who’d recruited Lucero singer Ben Nichols to provide back-up vocals on their last album, 2008’s Stay Positive — began several years ago when the band shared a record label (Frenchkiss) and played gigs alongside the Bloodthirsty Lovers, a Memphis band led by the Grifters’ Dave Shouse that included Selvidge for a while.

Selvidge befriended Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler at the time, which led to a few concert dates where another Selvidge band — the Secret Service — was asked to open for the Hold Steady.

The road to inviting Selvidge to join the Hold Steady opened up last year when the band parted ways with keyboard player Franz Nicolay.

“They decided to keep it to the core four members and were looking for a hired-gun keyboard player,” Selvidge says. “At that point, I think Tad said, if we’re bringing in a new keyboard player, I want a second guitarist too, and I want it to be Steve.”

Selvidge met with the band in December and learned 24 songs in preparation for touring. He played a couple of gigs with the band last month and will head out on a two-week East Coast tour starting April 2nd. Provided things go well, Selvidge says he’ll make a 14-month commitment to become a regular part of the band.

The band’s new album is said to be more guitar-heavy than previous records and provides opportunity for two guitars to play primary roles. Selvidge says he and Kubler have been working on some “crazy double guitar stuff” to use on tour.

While Selvidge heads out with the Hold Steady, his former bandmates LaVere and drummer Paul Taylor are also heading in new directions. Taylor is joining San Francisco-based singer Chuck Prophet, the frontman for ’80s alt-rock faves Green on Red, for an upcoming European tour. Meanwhile, LaVere has been holding practices with a new backing band, local instrumental stalwarts The City Champs (guitarist Joe Restivo, drummer George Sluppick, and organ player Al Gamble).

“We’ve been rehearsing our ever-loving asses off to get it up and running,” LaVere says. “I don’t know how much I’ll get to use Al, because he’s touring with other bands, so it might mostly still be a trio. But I’m excited about it. It’s been really good so far.”

LaVere will play her first live show with the new lineup April 17th for a charity event at the Levitt Shell but plans a public debut this summer, around the time she’ll head into the Archer Records studio with the City Champs — and others — to record her third full-length album. In the meantime, you can hear LaVere on Preservation: An Album Benefiting Preservation Hall and Its Music Outreach Program, a recently released all-star benefit album that features an array of vocalists performing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. In addition to LaVere, featured artists include Tom Waits, Dr. John, Pete Seeger, and Steve Earle.

Chilton tribute concert on tap: Late Big Star and Box Tops singer Alex Chilton was remembered at a local public memorial service at Minglewood Hall March 30th, but that won’t be the last chance for local fans to celebrate the life and music of the groundbreaking, Memphis-bred musician, who died last month in New Orleans. A previously scheduled Big Star concert for May 15th at the Levitt Shell will go on, now re-purposed as a tribute concert to Chilton. Original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens and modern-era members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow will perform, with guest musicians yet to be named. Tickets for the concert are $20 and are available via LevittShell.org.

Theater Theater Feature

Et Tu, Bette?

Post author By Chris Davis
Post date April 1, 2010

When the Kinks sang “girls will be boys and boys will be girls” they might as well have been singing about this peculiar juncture in Memphis’ 2009-10 theater season. Two of the three shows I caught this week featured an abundance of cross-dressing. Only Frost/Nixon, a tragedy disguised as a documentary about the confessions British talk-show host David Frost coaxed from Richard Nixon, exists in a world where the genders aren’t mixed and muddled.

In spite of what you may have heard, Jonathan Christian’s mascara-loving ZaZa is only the second best thing about Theatre Memphis’ ambitious, entertaining production of La Cage aux Folles. Considering the eye-popping sequined gowns designed and made by Theatre Memphis’ costumer André Bruce Ward, it may only be the third. That’s saying something, because Christian, who sings like a young Bea Arthur and looks like a different ’30s-era starlet with every costume change, takes what could have become a campy drag show and crafts it into a touching character study. He is perfectly paired with Randall Hartzog, who makes Georges, the owner of the wildest transvestite club in Saint-Tropez, the very picture of love and level-headed stability. The tender if occasionally turbulent romance Christian and Hartzog share is framed by the diverse and open-minded community of Saint-Tropez, which becomes the understated star of a show that, on its painted face, would seem to be all about over-the-top fabulousness.

La Cage functions as a farce, love story, and political statement. The serious silliness gets under way when Georges’ son, conceived during a fling with a showgirl, plans a party to introduce his father to his fiancée’s conservative, gay-hating parents.

Director Mitzi Hamilton’s choreography may not be as original as it has been in past productions she’s directed for Theatre Memphis, but all of the acting is spot-on. The vocal performances are memorable, from ZaZa’s drag classic “Put a Little More Mascara On” to the timeless love song “With You on My Arm.” The show’s highlight, however, is the rousing barroom singalong “The Best of Times Is Now.”

Through April 11th

The Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s eight-woman production of Julius Caesar is interesting but less successful. Dan McCleary, the company’s founding director, said he envisioned the show as an answer to the Elizabethans who only allowed men onstage. He also thinks women deserve a chance to play the great classical roles. But in this case, McCleary has altered Shakespeare’s text in ways that are more significant than he may realize. By making all the pronouns in the play feminine, he commits a kind of artistic genocide, creating a world without the faintest trace of a Y chromosome. Shakespeare’s players lovingly impersonated women. They didn’t obliterate them.

Classically trained performers showing off their diction is no substitute for nuanced characters and developed relationships. There’s lots of hard work on display here, but only Kerry Ryan comes close to creating a unique character. Even then her clownish Casca only shows us her funny side, not the elitist senator with nothing but contempt for the people she represents.

Julius Caesar is a timely drama about ambitious politicians who manipulate the fickle populace with speculation and innuendo and who resort to violence to achieve their goals. It could be a relevant piece of theater, but it plays out like an elegant stunt. Although the show has been plopped down in Germantown’s City Hall, no useful dialogue between the past and the present materializes.

Through April 11th

Speaking of politics, Frost/Nixon may be the best thing Playhouse on the Square’s guest director Rob Satterlee has done in Memphis since he staged Lanford Wilson’s chilling Book of Days in 2004. Frost/Nixon is a deceptively minimal piece that both exonerates Nixon and condemns him. What’s most astonishing about this production is how none of the players in the tight ensemble vanishes in the long shadows cast by Bill Andrews’ complex, career-defining performance as Richard Nixon or Michael Ingersoll’s finely tuned take on talk-show host David Frost. Andrews never settles for cheap impersonation. Ingersoll, a former company member, returns to Playhouse after a three-year run in the Chicago production of Jersey Boys.

Food & Wine Food & Drink

Block Party

Post author By Hannah Sayle
Post date April 1, 2010

Cooper-Young continues to expand its restaurant repertoire with the addition of Sweet Grass, a “low-country” restaurant opening at the corner of Cooper and Young.

Low-country cuisine comes from the Carolinas and surrounding area — as does the name Sweet Grass, which is a regional marshland plant used to weave baskets and hats. Chef Ryan Trimm, formerly of Grove Grill, spent a few years in Charleston, South Carolina, going to culinary school at Johnson & Wales and working in a local restaurant. He describes the food as a “coastal African and Cajun blend with Southern ingredients and a French technique.”

The Sweet Grass menu will offer small, medium, and large plates with prices ranging from $10 or less for small plates to $25 or less for large entrées. Glenn Hays co-owns the restaurant with Trimm, and like Hays’ Café 1912, Sweet Grass will keep wines at a lower price and will forego white linen tablecloths and busboys to keep prices affordable. “People are surprised to know how much those things factor into the cost of their meal,” Trimm says.

As for how Sweet Grass will fit into the Cooper-Young community — an area already teeming with restaurants — Trimm emphasizes the variety of cuisines represented there. “We’re all different, and competition breeds business. I think we’ll complement each other,” he says.

Sweet Grass will bring something new to the table with its take on Carolina eats: Charleston oyster stew with Yukon gold potatoes, Benton Farms smoked bacon, and scallop cream; low-country chicken jambalaya with okra, Benton Farms country ham, and Carolina gold rice; braised Newman Farms pork osso buco with collard greens, smoked bacon, shiitake, grits, and bourbon peach butter; and deep-dish sour-cream apple pie, a recipe from Trimm’s grandmother.

The official opening is set for April 8th. In the meantime, they’re procuring liquor and beer licenses and a Project Green Fork certification and also finishing up a few decorative details (including stained glass windows from the Glass Menagerie in Hernando, Mississippi). The space is painted a warm, sunny yellow and an earthy green, and the walls will be filled with work from local artists.

Initially, Sweet Grass will be open for dinner only, but Trimm hopes to open for lunch soon after.

Sweet Grass, 937 S. Cooper (278-0278)

New downtown-hangout hopeful, Escape Alley Sundry held its grand opening last Friday. A sundry store sells a variety of items, and Escape Alley offers not only gimcracks and antiques (like a stainless-steel commercial ashtray and an old bike chained to the ceiling) but also sundry eats.

Hot-dog lovers will appreciate the jumbo all-beef hot dog, all the more exciting for its long list of available toppings: cheese, onion, tomato, slaw, sauerkraut, horseradish, dill relish, beef and bean chili, Chinese mustard, Cholula hot sauce, chili garlic sauce, and more. The rest of the menu includes an assortment of items like beef tamales, natural peanut-butter sandwiches, shrimp cocktail, and nachos. The sundry serves beer but also accepts BYOB, with a small set up and corkage fee.

With a theme like “Have fun or get out!” Escape Alley is certainly aimed at a laid-back crowd, and just to grab a beer there is an experience.

The entrance is tucked away behind the club Escape on Marshall. The sundry only takes cash, but there’s an ATM available inside. As we move into summer, Escape Alley’s free WiFi and air conditioning might make it the perfect hangout. They are open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Escape Alley Sundry, 651 Marshall

(528-3337)

Film Features Film/TV

Slumdog Goes to Prison

Post author By Chris Herrington
Post date April 1, 2010

One of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language film, A Prophet is sort of like a French Goodfellas with more emphasis on prison scenes, a little less scene-by-scene richness, and a little more audience-courting embrace of the “universal.”

Like Goodfellas‘ Henry Hill, an Irish kid who makes an unlikely entry and rise in the Italian mafia, A Prophet‘s protagonist is an ethnic outsider who makes his way into a criminal order naturally wary of outsiders.

Malik El Djebena (newcomer Tahar Rahim) is a young French-Algerian man who finds himself imprisoned with a six-year sentence after attacking a police officer. An outsider in the prison culture divided by racial lines, Malik is immediately beaten in the yard and has his sneakers stolen but gets up to seek immediate reprisal, a nervy reaction that is noticed by the Corsican mafia element in the prison, including leader César Luciani (Niels Arestrup).

Soon after, an Arab witness, Reyeb, is sent to the prison pending trial and an order comes from the outside for César to have the new prisoner killed. Not wanting to risk his own men on the job, César courts Malik, telling him that he will murder Reyeb for the Corsicans or risk losing his own life. Prison logic becomes Darwinian: Kill or die.

Doing this deed for the Corsicans sets the initially naive, unformed Malik onto a path for the rest of his prison bid. In exchange for his hit on Reyeb, Malik is protected by the Corsicans, and he becomes something of a grunt worker/servant for them. But he is not of them and is still derided as a “dirty Arab.”

Slowly — the film takes place over several years — Malik begins to manipulate his half-in/half-out standing to elevate his station within the pre-existing criminal underworld. Though the film’s more than two-and-a-half-hour running time can be a bit of a grind, the duration and patient, realistic visual style allows A Prophet to accumulate detail. But the biggest reason the story works is Rahim, whose performance is fascinating.

Malik enters prison poor (he’s never taken a plane flight), illiterate, and totally unconnected. He’s a lost kid overwhelmed by the sudden experience of imprisonment, but Rahim lets us see him thinking through his situation. The actor’s lack of experience anchoring a feature film seems to dovetail with the character’s inexperience with prison culture and criminal-organization hierarchy. But Malik is stealthy and observant, and the film’s density lends the character’s prison growth curve and self-improvement more realism than it might otherwise have.

Malik’s cultural displacement ultimately works in his favor, and when César arranges furloughs for Malik in order to have him run mob errands for him on the outside, Malik uses the time to build up his own drug-running operation as well.

Newcomer Rahim is matched by veteran Arestrup, who plays César as an old lion in winter, more menacing for relative stillness and silence but whose comfort in command masks an increasingly tenuous hold on criminal leadership.

Director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) is no stranger to art-film crossover success, but he reaches a new level in A Prophet. But as strong as A Prophet is in its central performances and many stellar individual scenes, it doesn’t quite earn the self-promotion.

It may not play up violence as thrill seeking à la Brian De Palma’s much-too-beloved crime saga, but in pushing toward personal redemption, A Prophet displays its own brand of false slickness, referencing instead the likes of Slumdog Millionaire or The Shawshank Redemption. Whether you take those comps as endorsement or problematic might determine how fully you’re able to embrace A Prophet.

A Prophet

Opening Friday, April 2nd

Ridgeway Four

Film Features Film/TV

A time machine that’s detail-impaired.

Post author By Addison Engelking
Post date April 1, 2010

Midway through Hot Tub Time Machine, a drunken, stoned, shrooming John Cusack, who plays one of the film’s time bandits, bumps into cheery, shaggy Crispin Glover, who plays a bellboy. For moviegoers who can remember these two actors’ early careers, this brief encounter is a pleasant shock. Most people recall Cusack’s shy, furtive charm from films like 1989’s Say Anything, but Glover’s performance as a vulnerable, unpredictable teenage speedfreak in 1986’s River’s Edge was equally impressive. The stage is thus set for a long-overdue reunion between two American actors who exemplified the Reagan-era teenage boy. Unfortunately, Glover’s and Cusack’s accidental summit doesn’t yield any insight, conflict, or laughs. As it often happens in Hot Tub Time Machine, a potentially complex comic-historic scenario is steamrolled in favor of crowd-pleasing bodily-function disasters.

Several times during this not-bad-but-let’s-not-kid-ourselves film, my love of time-travel films essentially canceled out my hatred of ’80s teen comedies. But it’s hard not to remember that even the best of the ’80s teen flicks were fatally cartoonish, disposable, and pitched to the lowest common audience member. Seen again after nearly 30 years, their careless craftsmanship and awful performances look irrevocably and harmfully dated to all but the most uncritical nostalgia addicts.

However, for an attentive student of the Ferris Bueller–One Crazy Summer–Ski Patrol garbage that once padded the shelves of video stores — remember those? — there are some decent in-jokes and asides, including a visual nod to the finale of Sixteen Candles and someone who, in a tip of the cap to Better Off Dead, mutters, “I want my two dollars.” There’s a big concert moment inspired by Back to the Future and a William (né Billy) Zabka sighting as well.

But the sloppy execution of this time-traveling conceit is as irritating as it is avoidable. Period pieces don’t all need to be Barry Lyndon, but some elementary fact-checking would have been useful — especially in the soundtrack selections, one of the few places where the filmmakers try to convey period detail. The movie is supposed to occur during the winter of 1986-87, but Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart,” which is used twice, is a song they wrote in 1989, and their ballad “Home Sweet Home” is from 1985 (which is important once you see the closing credits). Also, although it was released as a single, no one back then was playing the Replacements’ “I Will Dare” on a ski-lodge jukebox.

Even in something as self-consciously and defiantly stupid as Hot Tub Time Machine, details matter.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Now playing

Multiple locations

Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Post author By Randy Haspel
Post date April 1, 2010

CREDIT: Basheeradesigns | Dreamstime.com

It happened in the 1930s, it happened in the 1960s, and it’s happening again now. The public dialogue becomes so heated in troubled times that demagogues with media access and conscience-challenged politicians pit one group against another for personal or political gain. Those who feel ignored and powerless begin to raise their voices, and the conflict heats and simmers. Sides are chosen, people march in the street and hold rallies. After a series of frustrations, the extreme element becomes the loudest voice of protest and drowns out any chance for dialogue with the other side, and then the rhetoric really turns ugly. As one side demonizes the other, the kettle boils over until some unhinged “law-abiding citizen” decides to alter history, and then somebody gets killed.

We are only one delusional psychotic who wants to impress Jodie Foster away from deadly violence. The Tea Party is taking its circus of horrors, with its vitriolic speakers, on the road. Coming to a town near you: roving bands of surly, misinformed, Toby Keith fans — and they’re armed.

I’d like to ask the folks who show up at these rallies one question: Who do you suppose is paying for this cartoon caravan to traverse the nation’s highways, organizing pro-anarchy assemblies for the disgruntled? While the poor, oppressed white people howl about “taking their country back” from the evil, fascist Democrats, they are being financed by ultraconservative billionaire families with names like Coors, Scaife, and Koch. Unlimited funding is available from racketeers like the American Enterprise Institute or Freedom Works, the Tea Party’s sponsors, to set up front groups to organize “grass roots” protests. While the Teabaggers rail against big government and the “Washington elites,” former speaker of the House Dick Armey is behind the scenes stirring the pot and making nice money doing it.

In the 1930s and 1960s, it was the poor and voiceless rising up against the wealthy and powerful. Now, the wealthy and powerful are paying the tab and pulling the protesters’ strings to try and prevent any further progressive legislation from cutting into their personal fortunes. The insane reaction in the wake of the passage of health-care reform, including death threats, vile voice messages, calls for vandalism against Democrats’ offices, and rhetoric alluding to gun violence, is equal to the excesses of any 1960s anti-war protest. Is all this rage really over giving 30 million people access to health insurance, or is there something deeper going on here? Although the leaders of the most recent Tea Party gathering in Nevada urged the crowd to tone down its nastiness (because of bad press), the racist element is still unmistakable. Many of these people believe Barack Obama is attempting to take away their tax money and give it to a drug dealer in Orange Mound for “reparations.”

I have no regrets about my participation in the anti-war demonstrations of the late 1960s, but I do regret being associated with the Weather Underground. The conduct of protesters on the fringes of the argument succeeded only in further polarizing the country. On November 15, 1969, I traveled to Washington, D.C., with 500,000 of my closest friends to march in the Moratorium to End the Vietnam War. As we walked toward the Capitol, I saw throngs of people, including entire families, making their way peacefully to the event. We listened to speakers like Dr. Benjamin Spock and Senator Eugene McCarthy and heard Peter, Paul, and Mary and Pete Seeger lead the crowd in singing John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” But right up front, blocking the view of the speaker’s platform, was a small group of Yippie radicals who had staked out their prime real estate in advance and were flying a giant Viet Cong flag.

Whatever your feelings about the war, the North Vietnamese were holding American prisoners. Men I knew from high school were serving in Vietnam, and I understood that if flying the enemy’s flag on the National Mall was repulsive to me, it would be enraging to those we were trying to persuade. The indelible image of the peace march in the collective consciousness was not one of peaceful assembly but of a few deranged hippies breaking windows and taunting police.

Shakespeare said, “The past is prologue,” so I am now able to accurately predict the future: These stonewallers and provocateurs should try to acclimate themselves to fringe status. While the Tea Party Express rolls into town like a pack of demented carnival barkers and fleeces the marks for contributions to help overturn legislation, the calmer majority of the populace looks upon the spectacle like watching bad theater. Men dressed in camouflage and carrying weapons and women holding homemade signs with inflammatory, racist slogans will not sway reasonable voters, just as waving the enemy’s flag did nothing to help end the Vietnam War.

And, by the way, without young people, your movement is doomed. Because they’re making the most noise, the Tea Party goofballs are convinced that they are on a victory march to overthrow the popularly elected government of the United States. They fail to see themselves as others see them and thus will be the most surprised at their utter failure to effect change. Then, the rest of us will really have cause for concern. I pray for the vigilance of the Secret Service. As history makes quite clear: from such political movements violence emerges.

Randy Haspel writes the blog “Born-Again Hippies,” where a version of this column first appeared.