Tag: Joe Biden

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At Large Letter From An Editor

Sweet Dreams

Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox (Photo: Library of Congress)

Did you see the video of President Trump singing the Eurythmics’ 1980’s hit, “Sweet Dreams”? He’s really pretty good, to be honest. Except honesty has nothing to do with it. The video — all of it, including the imitation of Trump’s voice — was created by a Google artificial intelligence program, an algorithm trained on Trump’s voice and speech patterns and tasked with creating this bizarre cover song.

The video was only online for a couple of days, but it’s just another example of what we’re all going to be facing in the coming years: The fact that most human creative endeavors can be replicated by artificial intelligence, including novels, screenplays, television scripts, videos of politicians or celebrities (or any of us), pornography, political propaganda, advertising jingles, emails, phone calls, “documentaries,” and even the news. It’s going to be a huge influence in our lives, and it has an enormous potential for creating mischief via disinformation and the manipulation of “reality.”

That’s why seven companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI — met with President Biden last Friday to announce a voluntary commitment to standards in the areas of safety and security. The companies agreed to:

  • Security test their AI products, and share information about their products with the government and other organizations attempting to manage the risks of AI.
  • Implement watermarks or other means of identifying AI-generated content.
  • Deploy AI tools to tackle society’s challenges, including curing disease and combating climate change.
  • Conduct research on the risks of bias and invasion of privacy from the spread of AI.


Again, these were voluntary agreements, and it bears noting that these seven companies are fierce competitors and unlikely to share anything that costs them a competitive edge. The regulation of artificial intelligence will soon require more than a loose, voluntary agreement to uphold ethical standards.

The U.S. isn’t alone in trying to regulate the burgeoning AI industry. Governments around the globe — friendly, and not so friendly — are doing the same. Learning the secrets of AI is the new global arms race. Using AI disinformation to control or influence human behavior is a potential weapon with terrifying prospects.

It’s also a tool that corporations are already using. I got an email this week urging me to buy an AI program that would generate promotional emails for my company. All I had to do was give the program the details about what I wanted to promote and the AI algorithm would do the rest, cranking out “lively and engaging” emails sure to win over my customers. I don’t have a company, but if I did, the barely unspoken implication was that this program could eliminate a salary.

It’s part of what’s driving the strike by screen actors and writers against the major film and television studios: The next episode of your favorite TV show could be “written” by an AI program, thereby eliminating a salary. Will the public care — or even know — if, say, the latest episode of Law & Order was generated by AI? Will Zuckerberg figure out how to use AI to coerce you into giving Meta even more of your personal information? (Does it even Meta at this point? Sorry.) You can be sure we’ll find out the answer to those questions fairly soon.

And we’ve barely even begun to see how AI can be utilized in the dirty business of politics. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign used an AI-generated voice of Donald Trump in an ad that ran in Iowa last week. Trump himself never spoke the words used in the ad, but if you weren’t aware of that, you might be inclined to believe he did. Which is, of course, the point: to fool us, to make the fake seem real. It’s coming. It’s here. Stay woke, y’all.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something …

Categories
At Large Opinion

Nerds of a Feather

Call me Mary Poppins ’cause I will feed the damn birds, tuppence a bag. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)

In the morning, I like to sit out on our little deck. There’s a flower garden, a birdbath, a seed feeder, and a steady stream of feathery friends zipping in and out from the surrounding trees. I enjoy watching them while figuring out the daily Wordle and sipping a Nespresso. And yes, I realize that this is probably the nerdiest possible way to begin a day.

Or so you thought. Now let me crank the nerd-level knob up to 11: I also turn on a Bird Song app on my iPhone that lets me know which birds are within earshot. A couple days ago, the app alerted me to the presence of three birds I’d never seen before: a golden-crowned kinglet, a Kentucky warbler, and the fantastically named yellow-rumped warbler. Maybe there’s a migration happening, I thought, while staring through my binoculars at a golden-headed little bird in the magnolia. Colorful birds were flitting about everywhere. Hummingbirds were buzzing in the salvia. It was like the bird-nerd Super Bowl.

On the Flyer Slack channel a half-hour later, I couldn’t resist letting my co-workers know my exciting news. I even sent a screenshot of my bird app. One of them responded with a meme that read: “One minute you are young and cool, maybe even a little dangerous, and the next minute you are reading Amazon reviews for birdseed.”

Ouch! Why you young whippersnapper! You have no idea how cool and dangerous I used to be. I was once hauled to a cop car wearing zip-tie cuffs and tossed in the back seat. The officer didn’t even do the “watch-your-head” move as he shoved me in. Before that, the police had literally broken down my front door and searched my house room to room, even tossing dresser drawers. Then they hauled me and my roommates off to jail — for the horrendous crime of possessing marijuana.

This was back in the early 1970s, when I was busy cramming four years of college into seven — dropping out to work or travel for a few months, then returning to classes for a semester. I lived with four other guys in a big old dump of a house in Columbia, Missouri. In those days, mere possession of pot could send you to jail, and one of the neighbors had ratted us out. Maybe it was the pungent plumes of ditch-weed pouring off our front porch every night that set her off. I dunno. Either that or the repetitive playing of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” off that Iron Butterfly album. We really dug the eight-minute drum solo. (In retrospect, we should have gone to jail for that.)

Anyway, the cops found some pot in the kitchen, but by the next morning they apparently realized they had no way of determining whose it was — and we weren’t admitting anything, because we were cool, almost dangerously so. Since they really couldn’t charge five of us for possession of a half-bag of weed, the police let us go with a stern warning to lay off the devil’s lettuce. Which we all ignored, even after doing that hard time in the Boone County slammer.

Now, pot is legal or legal-ish in 19 states, with more coming on every year. Everybody from college kids to your great-grandma is gobbling “edibles” and discussing the merits of sativa versus indica. Last week, President Joe “Cheech” Biden issued a blanket pardon for everyone who’d been convicted of marijuana possession under federal charges, which according to The New York Times, is around 6,500 people. That’s a lot of bird-watching geezers, though not enough to swing a national election, as the Foxers are claiming.

The more important part of President Doobie’s statement was his announced intention to get marijuana removed as a Schedule 1 drug. That’s long overdue. Putting pot in the same class with such drugs as fentanyl and heroin has never made any sense.

But I digress. Bottom line: The possession of pot is no longer “dangerous.” It’s not even cool, if everyone is doing it, right? So please, spare me your judgment, kidz. I’ve got some birdseed to order.

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Tennessee AG Slatery Celebrates Win In LGBTQ Discrimination Lawsuit

Y’all means all, y’all. (Photo: Nashville LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce)

Tennessee’s Attorney General celebrated a win for discrimination last week after a federal judge blocked a move that would have allowed trans kids to play sports on a team of their gender and more.

In September, Tennessee AG Herbert Slatery led a 20-state coalition in a lawsuit to stop anti-discrimination guidance from President Joe Biden. The order was issued in January and strives to prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. 

Biden’s guidance challenged state laws on whether schools must allow biological males to compete on girls’ sports teams, whether employers and schools may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person’s preferred pronouns. 

Herbert Slatery (Credit: State of Tennessee)

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” reads Biden’s order from January. “Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.”

However, Slatery claimed in September that Biden’s order “threatens women’s sports and student and employee privacy.” To get there legally, Slatery and his coalition (including Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and more) claimed only Congress — not the president — can change “these sensitive issues” of “enormous importance.” The coalition’s complaint asserts that the claim that the order simply implements the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision on anti-discrimination is faulty.

“The agencies simply do not have that authority,” Slatery said in a statement at the time. “But that has not stopped them from trying. … All of this, together with the threat of withholding educational funding in the midst of a pandemic, warrants this lawsuit.”

Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee blocked the guidance, which Slatery called “expansive and unlawful” and would have forced, among others things, the use of “biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns.”

“The District Court rightly recognized the federal government put Tennessee and other states in an impossible situation: choose between the threat of legal consequences including the withholding of federal funding, or altering our state laws to comply,” Slatery said in a statement. “Keep in mind these new, transformative rules were made without you — without your elected leaders in Congress having a say — which is what the law requires. We are thankful the court put a stop to it, maintained the status quo as the lawsuit proceeds, and reminded the federal government it cannot direct it’s agencies to rewrite the law.” 

The court ruling drew scorn from LGBTQ advocates, who were quick to point out the judge in the case, Charles Atley Jr., was appointed by former president Donald Trump. 

“We are disappointed and outraged by this ruling from the Eastern District of Tennessee where, in yet another example of far-right judges legislating from the bench, the court blocked guidance affirming what the Supreme Court decided in Bostock v. Clayton County: that LGBTQ+ Americans are protected under existing civil rights law,” Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Nothing in this decision can stop schools from treating students consistent with their gender identity. And nothing in this decision eliminates schools’ obligations under Title IX or students’ or parents’ abilities to bring lawsuits in federal court. HRC will continue to fight these anti-transgender rulings with every tool in our toolbox.”

This preliminary injunction will remain in effect until the matter is resolved. The matter could get a further decision from the federal court in Tennessee, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, or the Supreme Court of the United States.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Ending Title 42

Photo: Vladek | Dreamstime.com

“Title 42,” an obscure section of a 1944 law authorizing extraordinary [anti-]immigration powers during public health emergencies, was “discovered” by the Trump administration in 2020 as Covid-19 spread globally. They interpreted the title “loosely,” using it to deport people and deny asylum seekers access to the USA. With the election of Joe Biden, most hoped for relief and a return to policies that reflect the generosity and spirit of the United States — a “nation of immigrants.” Yet, the past 16 months have proven difficult in walking back Trump’s inhumane immigration policies, revealing the timidity of Biden and the Democrats’ approach to the ongoing immigration conundrum.

Trump, together with his brash, anti-immigrant senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, genuinely believed that closing off the nation to immigrants (well … certain immigrants) and asylum seekers would win them re-election in 2020. The “Muslim Ban” was one of their first noxious acts upon arrival in office. Trump — sensitive diplomat always — referred to certain African nations and (in our own hemisphere) El Salvador and Haiti as “shithole countries.” He made it clear that the U.S. should do more to promote immigration from places like … Norway.

Trump rejected our obligations under the Geneva Conventions and our own legal and moral obligations by refusing to process asylum seekers, preferring instead to leave them living in squalor on the Mexico side of the U.S./Mexico border. He also cut the number of refugees we accept down to a fraction of our usual acceptance rate, thus undermining our moral standing in the world.

He seized on the pandemic, took authority under Title 42, and expelled asylum seekers, including unaccompanied minors, under the contention that they posed a health risk to the American public.

Most immigrant advocates believed Biden would end the use of Title 42 on the first day of his presidency since it appeared to be an illegal and factually unsupportable use of the law. Many thought Biden would quickly end Trump’s “Wait in Mexico” policy, which has served only to strand thousands of Central Americans, Haitians, and Venezuelans (among others); the policy has benefited smugglers of narcotics and of human beings, and the criminal networks that prey on the vulnerabilities of people who can’t or won’t return to their nation of origin.

What to do? First, let’s change the narrative on immigration. This means being truthful about “why” people are fleeing to the United States. In the case of Haiti and El Salvador, our nation has supported (in recent history) repressive, corrupt “anti-communist” regimes that have not been kind to their people.

Second, let’s stop the racist nonsense about immigrants. Norwegians don’t want to come here! They live in a nicely socialist state of prosperity with full healthcare, long life-spans, and plenty of oil to sell.

Third, our economy prospers thanks to the work, contributions, creativity, and energy of immigrants. The arguments “against” this statement are simply fake news. If we continue to cut off legitimate paths to immigration and immigrants (for short-term political gains), we run the risk of becoming Japan or Italy, with an aging population, political and social hostility to immigrants from the global “south,” all leading to long-term economic stagnation.

The palpable anger and hostility on the far right in this nation does not translate to long-term economic growth and/or social stability. Take a look at January 6, 2021, as a prime example. The “Recent Right” is simply interested in winning; they want short-term political gains, so they can control budgets, power, and money. Period.

The open hostility, last month, of some senators toward an eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee hardly helped bring the nation together, and when our own Marsha Blackburn asked a Harvard-trained judge to define the word “woman,” most Americans rolled their eyes in wonder. The real wonder? How did this unqualified person win statewide office here in Tennessee?

The media has distorted the facts on immigration with sensationalistic reporting and frightening stories of “waves” of migrants heading to our (southern) border. The fact is people are allowed to come here, apply for refugee status, and receive a hearing before a judge — assuming their case is deemed credible. Our nation’s immigration laws are unique in this regard, and rather than bemoan the fact that people want to come here, we should celebrate the story of America as an open, immigrant-friendly nation. An immigrant-friendly nation whose prosperity — culturally, socially, and economically — has centered on the welcoming of immigrants.

If comprehensive immigration reform is legislatively impossible, Biden needs to implement a comprehensive executive policy. He failed to immediately rid us of Title 42, and he can’t win the political argument by attempting to placate the unreasonable right with half-measures and reliance on Trump-era policies.

Biden must reframe the narrative with policies that demonstrate who we are as a people. Immigrants are instrumental to the prosperity of our nation — it’s always been this way. Biden should make this argument; he needs to spend some of his waning political capital to demonstrate a clear commitment to the bedrock ideals that have made America great.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and the board chair of Latino Memphis. Michael LaRosa teaches history at Rhodes College.

Categories
At Large Opinion

The Price of Gaffes

President Joe Biden (Photo: Palinchak | Dreamstime.com)

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

With these nine words — apparently an ad-lib departure from his scripted speech in Poland last Saturday — President Joe Biden started the media’s hearts a-thumpin’ and created a field day for pundits, commentators, and other opinionistas. The next morning, the front pages of the country’s major newspapers led with the story of Biden’s “gaffe.” The Sunday cable shows were all over it. Quelle horreur!

Biden was speaking of Vladimir Putin, of course, the man who has single-handedly shoved Europe into disorder, destruction, and bloody conflict over the past month, the man who unilaterally invaded and attempted a takeover of a sovereign nation by brutal force.

But, apparently, suggesting that such a man should be removed from power is a bridge too far. Biden’s improv sent Washington media elites to their fainting couches. What will Vlad think? Will he be peeved? Sensing that the president may have taken a step too far, the White House immediately walked back the statement, saying that the president only meant that Putin should be removed from power in Ukraine. Right.

Here’s the thing: There are two sets of rules in play here. Donald Trump used to utter more “gaffes” before lunch on any given Tuesday than Biden has offered up in 14 months. “Little Rocket Man,” anyone? Redrawing the path of a hurricane on a map with a Sharpie? Suggesting that scientists figure out a way to “do an injection into the lungs” with bleach? Now those are gaffes.

And remember that Trump loves Putin, repeatedly calling him a “genius.” At a Mar-a-Lago gathering a month ago, Trump said, “Putin’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”

How remarkable is that? The former president of the United States is rooting for the current iteration of Hitler’s invasion of Poland to succeed, discussing it like it’s a real estate deal. The remark didn’t get much play on the morning shows, though. Not gaffe-y enough, I guess.

Biden, by contrast, was saying the quiet part out loud, something most decent people wish would happen: Putin has got to go. Forty years ago, President Reagan routinely called for the Berlin Wall to fall and labeled the Soviet Union “an evil empire.” Today, that’s not prudent. And, as with everything else in the U.S. these days, the political tribal divide defines how we react to things.

We have only to look at the circus surrounding the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for another example. Despite having no real blemishes on her record and more judicial and trial experience than any nominee in decades, she suffered the slings and rubber-tipped arrows of GOP opportunists such as Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and our homegrown lightweight, Marsha Blackburn, who accused Jackson of having a “hidden agenda to bring critical race theory into the law” (Huh?) and asked the judge to “define a woman.” (I would dearly love to see Marsha try to answer that latter question. Or “what’s eight times seven?” for that matter.)

Speaking of SCOTUS, how about that wacky Ginni Thomas, amirite? (Fun fact: Ginni’s number was 867-5309.) Copies of texts she sent to Trump chief of staff, Mark Meadows, were released to the media last week, and it’s clear she was a major force in organizing the January 6th insurrection and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. Kind of unseemly for the wife of a Supreme Court justice, don’t you think? Surely, even Republicans would agree with that? Nope. Crickets.

But, to be honest, I’m hard-pressed to think of any Republican senator who would put principle and/or love of country over party hackery and self-interest. Maybe Mitt Romney? Lisa Murkowski? I know the Democrats have their own hacks, but the country has come to a sad state of affairs when we can’t find agreement on issues with such an obvious demarcation between right and wrong. It’s always tribes über alles — much to our mutual detriment.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

On the Covid Carousel

Ha! This is to be the Flyer’s last issue of 2021, and true to form, this strange year had one more trick for me. I began this column frustrated with recent messaging from the White House on Covid. I’ve been disappointed with the federal response to (again) rising case counts driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, a response that can be boiled down to, “Get vaccinated. It’s on you. What do you expect us to do?”

I had planned to suggest that at-home tests and disposable masks be sent to anyone who wants them, free of charge. Well, today, news has broken that President Joe Biden intends to send 500 million at-home tests to anyone who requests them. I’m glad our president made that decision. It’s the right one, but I wish he would have thought about how inconvenient it will be for me to have to rework the column I had just finished.

This is how we should have been fighting the pandemic all along. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but combating a global crisis requires teamwork. Anyway, if the government doesn’t exist to coordinate in a crisis, to protect the citizenry it represents, then it’s just a glorified caretaker of capital and property.

Some anti-vaxxers will throw away test kits or masks sent to them. They might see the move as government overreach. So what? Who cares? They already think almost everything is government overreach. Why let other people suffer because a vocal minority has overdosed on the conspiracy theory Kool-Aid? With all due respect to former President John F. Kennedy, it’s fine to ask what you can do for your country, but I don’t think the country should worry about doing too much for anyone. If one out of every 10 tests gets tossed (or burned on TikTok while someone rants over an audio clip of a Lee Greenwood song), but those other nine tests help prevent super-spreader events, isn’t it worth it?

This message, excerpted from a press briefing by Jeff Zients, the head of President Biden’s coronavirus task force, can be found on whitehouse.gov: “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

Harsh words, but they’re likely true. Still, very nearly two years into this pandemic, we continue to do the same things while expecting different results. It’s a mistake to frame the ongoing pandemic as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Setting aside that all children younger than 5 years old are unvaccinated, that some immunocompromised people can’t get vaccinated, it’s a failure to imagine we can ever extricate ourselves from this mess by dint of personal responsibility alone.

So send tests and masks to every home in the United States. I also can’t help but wonder what would happen if we issued a new stimulus payment contingent on vaccination status. Oh, and those vaccine patents? Waive ’em. Send vaccines to every country. Again, this is a global pandemic. What good will it do us to get Covid under control in the U.S. if the Pi or Sigma variant appears elsewhere? How many variants have to arise before we accept that national borders do not make for effective protection against disease? Even if its first emergence is on another continent, it just takes an asymptomatic case and a nonstop flight for us to be right back at square one.

And no, this doesn’t mean I want everything to be free for everyone. I know I’ll get my fair share of emails from burner addresses and unsigned letters calling me a filthy communist (I do already), but I would like to think we can have a more nuanced discussion. In matters of life and death, of ever getting off the Covid carousel, I think it’s worth considering bold actions.

That’s my hope for 2022 — that we take the wider view, that we worry about who needs help instead of getting hung up on the idea that someone might get more aid than they need. So, to our president and his administration, I say that these 500 million at-home Covid tests are a nice start.

Now … what’s next?

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Embracing America

Photo: Thomas Dutour | Dreamstime.com

Joe Biden’s presidency — by all accounts — is on a ventilator right now, and many people want his administration to asphyxiate. He could save himself, and the country, by leading us toward an innovative reform of our immigration system.

Our current system is based on an outdated, anachronistic visa system that rewards “skills” deemed necessary for the development of the United States economy and society. Specialized engineers from Slovakia, research scientists from South Africa, and concert pianists from Paraguay have been able to visit here, stay here, and thrive. But the vast majority of the world’s population is “unskilled” and thus, the contemporary conundrum.

We can keep the current system intact and add in an “Americas exception,” which would acknowledge three realities. First, the USA shares a continent with Canada, Mexico, and seven nations of Central America. Second, those nations, with the exception of Canada, are significantly poorer, in real economic terms, than the USA. Third, we’ve intervened in virtually all of the nations mentioned above, mostly in a hostile, negative, and menacing military manner. I would extend my plan of prioritizing visas for people of the Americas to the Caribbean nations, especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Mexico is the first obvious nation to consider. About 44 percent of the population of 120 million are classified as poor. We share a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, a border that was artificially created in 1848 when the U.S. took 51 percent of Mexico’s territory in a war designed to … take Mexico’s territory. We wanted the land to extend cotton production into Texas and further west, and we wanted to extend our national border to the Pacific. We also wanted to extend slavery.

How have we responded to this history? By building a wall and insulting the people who live in Mexico, referring to them as “rapists and drug dealers.” The vast majority of Mexicans who come to the USA want to work here, send money back to loved ones in Mexico, and improve their standard of living. Let’s make it easier for them to come here: We offer very few legal visas to unskilled workers — maybe 5,000 for the entire world. We could change this by simply prioritizing Mexico and recognizing our historic ties to the country and our 19th century “grand theft (half) nation.”

Then there’s Guatemala. A fascinating new historical novel (Harsh Times) by the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa offers an unpleasant appraisal of the U.S. role in deposing the legitimately elected president there in 1954. Vargas Llosa — hardly a leftist — reminds us that the USA stalled a legitimate attempt at socioeconomic reform in the small Central American nation while supporting some of the most repressive, reprehensible people in the region. The legacy of our actions? Sadness, civil war, authoritarianism, and about 300,000 deaths from 1960 to the mid-1990s when peace accords were finally signed there. And wide-scale misery: About 54 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty.

We really do have an obligation to help the people of these places and we’ve certainly helped in many ways: Our nation has been generous with aid and support after natural disasters, we’ve offered people the opportunity to stay in the USA through TPS — “Temporary Protected Status” — designed for folks from countries ravaged by natural disasters and/or really absurd political policies (Haiti, Nicaragua, to name two). We also, in 2012, implemented a policy via presidential executive action called DACA, which protects kids who have come to the United States as infants with their parents. TPS and DACA are both “temporary” fixes — TPS is designated at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Both programs were attacked by a hostile Trump administration, both saved by the U.S. judiciary system.

We need permanent solutions to support immigrants — we should focus on supporting people who want to come here, work here, and help our economy and society. We have a special obligation to our neighbors to the south.

Without immigrants, we become Italy — an aging population, politically motivated low levels of immigration, escalating healthcare costs, followed by endless economic stagnation. The Italians, of course, did give us Michelangelo (we responded by gifting the world … Andy Warhol). But to avoid the socioeconomic Italianization of America, we have to bring in immigrants who want to work here, live here, and continue building our economy and society. Let’s truthfully study our history. Let’s work in collaboration with our neighbors to the south and break out of this politically motivated, unproductive, and unkind immigration impasse that’s distorting our economy and just might, sadly, suffocate the Biden administration.

Michael LaRosa teaches history at Rhodes College.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Let’s Go, Brian!

Target of Operation Let’s Go, Brian

It was October 15th and President Joe Biden was pissed, fuming, from the soles of his shiny brogans to the tips of his little white mullet. He looked around the White House Situation Room at his gathered political team and growled: “We have an issue, people.”

“Yes sir, several,” said press secretary Jen Psaki, brightly, “and we’re tackling all of them today, as you’ll see. First, of course, we need to figure out what the heck to do about Joe Manchin …”

“Eff Joe Manchin,” said the president.

“Well, yes sir. Sure. We can come back to that. And we have to determine what concessions we can get on climate change from …”

“Eff climate change.”

“What? Sir, please … What about your trip to Europe in two weeks? You’re meeting the pope.”

“JEN, you’re not understanding me. There is only one issue we need to deal with right now … and that’s Brian Kelsey.”

“Who?”

“Brian Kelsey, the Tennessee state senator who lives in Nashville and represents Germantown. He’s the key to everything. If we can bring down Brian Kelsey, it all falls into place! We’ll be able to get full socialism, at last — gun bans, knife bans, in-utero vaccinations, $50-an-hour minimum wage for Black people, forced healthcare for the sick, the teaching of facts and science in public schools, required face masks for pets, all of it.”

“I had no idea,” said Psaki.

“Oh yeah,” said the president. “Kelsey’s the head of the snake. That’s why I’m announcing today the launch of a top-secret federal plan to take him out. It’s called ‘Operation Let’s Go, Brian.’ That little rat bastard’s going down like the Titanic.”

I may have made up some of the above material. Or all of it. But after seeing Brian Kelsey’s overwrought, self-righteous reaction to the announcement that he’d been indicted on five federal felony counts of campaign fraud last week, it’s clear he’d love us to believe it.

“Look, this is nothing but a political witch hunt,” Kelsey said when the indictments were announced. “The Biden administration is trying to take me out because I’m conservative and I’m the number-one target of the Tennessee Democratic Party.”

Really? This presumes that a) Joe Biden has actually ever heard of Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey, which is doubtful; and b) that even if he had heard of him, he would have been able to launch an investigation in 2017, when the FBI began looking into Kelsey’s case and when a certain orange-haired former president was in charge of the Justice Department. In short, Kelsey is spewing horse puckey.

His case stems from 2016, when Kelsey was making a run for Congress and attempted to switch funds he’d raised for his state races to an account for his federal race, which is a federal crime. The grand jury that indicted Kelsey alleges that he laundered the money by using state campaign funds to “buy” a membership into a Nashville supper club, which then conveniently made a like donation to Kelsey’s Congressional campaign fund. Slick, if true. And I’m guessing it is, since a number of Republicans are facing similar allegations regarding this “supper club.”

And, as is usual for Republicans these days, Kelsey immediately played the victim card, claiming persecution by the current GOP whipping boy, President Biden. Let’s go, Brandon!

It’s really bad timing for Kelsey. He’ll be distracted from the “Right to Get Sick” special session currently going on in Nashville, in which Republicans are attempting to pass every possible measure they can think of to stop local health departments, private businesses, and government officials from mandating any precautions against any pandemics, current and future.

I can’t imagine anything stupider, but then again, I could have never imagined a major U.S. political party intentionally linking itself to the Dark Ages, eschewing science and reason and spreading ignorance and divisiveness — from the top of the party to obscure state senators from Tennessee.

Brian Kelsey says he’s innocent, and that President Joe Biden is out to get him. We know the latter statement is a lie. The jury is still out on the former.

Categories
Music Music Blog

For Inauguration, Justin Timberlake & Ant Clemons Drop Video Shot at Stax

CREDIT: Mark Nguyen

The music video begins inconspicuously, with a city cross section at night, a lonely train horn in the distance. Though, if you’re not in Memphis when you see it, you’ll do a double take, so familiar and distinctive is that sound. But when the image cuts to a dim recording studio and the guitar begins the song, only those who noted the street signs in the opening shot will guess what studio it is.
Mark Nguyen

Justin Timberlake & Ant Clemons

By then a listener will be focused on the powerful, earnest vocal delivery of Ant Clemons. It was his idea to make the video happen in the first place. And for a while, the significance of where Clemons is singing is not obvious. For so many who are watching the video premiere, the words that ring so true are what matter.

Cause we’re on our way to better
Better’s ahead
It gets worse before it gets better
But better’s ahead

Better days are coming

Clemons and Memphis homeboy Justin Timberlake originally created the song, “Better Days,” for “Rock the Runoff,” a virtual fundraiser held last December 3rd for Stacy Abrams’ organization, Fair Fight. Clemons began the composition months before last year’s presidential election and brought it to Timberlake, who also contributed to the songwriting. As fate would have it, Timberlake recorded his vocal track on election night as he watched the returns rolling in.

But last night’s video was a re-imagining of the song. And the makeover made it both more universal, as part of the prime time broadcast special, “Celebrating America,” honoring the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and more local, as expressed in the street signs you see when the video starts: East McLemore Avenue and College Street.

As the video goes on, and Timberlake takes a verse, you see more of the room they’re singing in as they walk along. When they walk out the front door, it’s unmistakable: They are at Stax. Clemons and Timberlake wing and walk down the empty street at night, the better to see the marquee and signs of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and the Stax Music Academy, in all their neon glory. But as they stroll along, and the song’s intensity builds, others gather around them at  the crossroads. And many of those faces may have been familiar to Memphis viewers.

As it turned out, Clemons and Timberlake invited students and alumni of Stax Music Academy to perform alongside them in the new video, with a band led by Emmy-nominated musical director Adam Blackstone. The end result was a powerful moment in the history of Memphis music, and the history of America.

“The fact that the Stax Museum and Stax Music Academy were chosen by Justin Timberlake, Ant Clemons and the Presidential Inaugural Committee to represent Memphis, Tennessee, in the 2021 presidential inauguration, speaks not only volumes about the power, magic, and timelessness of soul music, but also casts a bright light on the work we have been doing here at the Soulsville Foundation for more than 20 years now,” said Soulsville Foundation President and CEO Richard Greenwald. “We are grateful to our friend Justin Timberlake for embracing our mission and genuinely caring about the young people with whom we work every day.”

Timberlake began his relationship with Stax Music Academy in 2019, when he partnered with Levi’s for their Levi’s Music Project, surprising students with a two-day songwriting workshop with Timbaland, Danja and Rob Knox and Elliot Ives. Levi’s and Timberlake also equipped the school with a new room called “The Song Lab” — a remodeled facility meant for songwriting workshops. Timberlake also brought attention to Stax Music Academy during a taping of Ellen’s “Greatest Night of Giveaways,” holiday special where he surprised one of the students with tickets to the Grammys, a full scholarship to the Grammys camp and $50,000 on behalf of Green Dot. In addition, Green Dot also gave Stax Music Academy $250,000.

Last night, the video for “Better Days” was a fine capstone to a day that positively blossomed with artful expressions of hope and determination, such as National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s recitation, or the Benediction by the Rev. Dr. Silvester Beaman. And it immersed viewers in a tableaux that rings true and familiar to many Memphians. At the song’s height, as people gather and sing, the gently lilting tune has risen to a wave of gospel fervor out in the streets. And then, suddenly, it ends, and we’re left standing there at the crossroads a while longer, back to the quiet, and the casual laughter of friends, and the train wailing in the distance.  

For Inauguration, Justin Timberlake & Ant Clemons Drop Video Shot at Stax

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Little Dark Age

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” — Ulysses S. Grant.

As I write this, it’s the day after the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 24 hours after politicians like 8th District Congressman David Kustoff and Senator Marsha Blackburn release their annual pious MLK quotes on Twitter. Because if anyone exemplifies the ideals of Dr. King, it’s Republicans who supported the overturning of a presidential election in order to appease the deluded, hateful supporters of a narcissistic would-be autocrat.

Kustoff had the utter audacity to cite this King quote: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Are you kidding me? Tell it to your friends who were at the Capitol last week, David. Tell it to the president whose boots you licked. I expect this kind of stuff from Blackburn, who’s been a lightweight and sellout for years. But Kustoff is smarter than Blackburn. He knows better. His cynical embrace of Trump’s corruption and lies is appalling.

Today is also the day before President-elect Joe Biden gets inaugurated in front of — what? — 300 people? Thanks to Kustoff’s and Blackburn’s pals, the ignorant yahoos who destroyed the Capitol a couple weeks ago, this year’s inauguration will feature a “crowd” made up of 25,000 troops. Trump won’t be there, having pardoned a bunch of sleazos before hopping a jet to Mar-a-Lago for some well-deserved R&R before his Senate impeachment trial. But there will be some good news for him: His only inaugural crowd will no doubt have been larger than Biden’s. Sean Spicer, wherefore art thou?

This new administration and this new Congress and Senate take over a country in chaos. Millions of Americans are unemployed, facing eviction, a lack of food and money, and an epidemic that will have killed half-a-million of us by the end of February, roughly a year after we were told by President Trump that it would “just go away.”

It’s a country in which more than 70 million people bought into the Trump fever-dream, a twisted vision that tapped into fear and latent anger more effectively than most of us imagined was possible. Take a minute to think about what Trump (and his political and media enablers) convinced his base to fear and/or distrust: any Democrat, any liberal, immigrants of color, journalists and most major media outlets, Black people, Mexicans, Antifa, “cancel culture,” mail-in voting, the American electoral system, scientists and medical experts, the Justice department, military leaders … I could go on.

Joe Biden says he wants to unite the country. I wish him luck. Maybe start with bringing back some iteration of the Fairness Doctrine, some sort of legislation that will ensure that knowingly broadcasting lies and disinformation on public airways or providing a place for it on the internet won’t be tolerated. It’s not just Fox News or OANN. It’s Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, you name it. There has to be some sort of recalibration, some way to monitor this stuff. Too many people are being radicalized by lies and false conspiracies. The fact that millions of people actually bought into the insanity of QAnon is itself astounding and terrifying.

Similarly, the Big Lie about Trump “winning in a landslide” was allowed to be spread unchecked in too many places by too many people without pushback or fact-checking. We’ll be dealing with the fallout from it for quite some time. Thanks, David and Marsha. Good work.

Now that we have some vaccines that work, we have to figure out how to get the medicine into as many Americans as quickly as possible. The Trump administration’s “plan” of leaving it up to the states has resulted in an ineffective, spread-shot system without consistency or logic. Over the weekend, I saw several posts on social media from folks who’d gotten the vaccine. Only one was over 75 years old. They were all from out of state. Lots of folks were asking, understandably, “How did you do that?”

I went to the Shelby County Health Department website on Monday and learned nothing about how to schedule a shot. I followed a link to the state of Tennessee COVID site, where I could fill out a multi-page survey (outdated) to see if I was eligible for a shot, but there was no mechanism for signing up, and no indication of when I’d be able to do so. We’re still stumbling around. Hopefully, when the feds take over, they’ll flip on a light switch. We’ve been in this little dark age for too long.