I love Sharon Jones, but I don’t think her version of this song works. Maybe sometimes a folk song is just a folk song.

At least you didn’t get an erection.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Today, two of my own children are in Washington DC to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama and bear witness to history. It makes me proud that they take an interest in our public life. It has been a long journey. Of all the memories I cherish, there are few more heartwarming and gratifying than this.

That ‘net was made for you & me.

Shucks. I think HBO has a lot to learn about bit torrent and peer-to-peer.

A great firewall there
Tried to stop me
Prevented access
through Firefox and IE
But via bit torrent
it says “Download is complete”

That ‘net was made for you & me.

But he didn’t get shit-all passed until after the ‘64 elections. I think you’re taking an emotional perspective on an event that was determined much more by structural factors and effective power politics.

The sheer volume in numbers of people listening to Tao Rodriguez sing, and watching Pete Seeger lead, is a testament to the meaning this has, to the unifying power of working together, instead of giving in to cynicism.

It’s no problem to me, honest, that Pete gets a couple of lyrics wrong, or that he’s a step slower than he used to be in leading out the words to a song. After all, he himself says he can hardly remember anything, about Odetta, or song lyrics or anything. I’d say that he does right well for a nearly-90.

You go, Pete. And … you go Tao. Those guys were a good example of culture for my kids, who are 3 and almost 10 and love to sing. The younger one asked for “this land is my land, and your land,” he asked for Pete Seeger, whom we sing about in lullabies. He’s got something to grow on, and so do we all, until we’re dead. Or cynical.

Also? Doesn’t matter if German TV thinks that Bruce is singing the high hard tones that Tao makes (that sound like his granddaddy of old). Doesn’t matter whether they call it an Amtsantritt, or the slightly more sinister-sounding Amtseinfuehrung. They’re all watching, and many, many people worldwide are willing to hand in their Cynic’s Union cards for something more wide and inclusive. That’s a good thing. Eh?

THE FACT THAT his [Howard Zinn] text barely mentions either conservatism or Christianity is telling. The former is nothing but an excuse to grind the poor (“conservatism” itself doesn’t even appear in the index), while religion gets a brief mention during Anne Hutchinson’s rebellion against the Puritan fathers and then vanishes from the next 370 years of history.

Given his approach to history, Zinn’s angry pages about the global reach of U.S. power are about as surprising as his support for Ralph Nader in 2000. Of course, President William McKinley decided to go to war with Spain at “the urging of the business community.” Zinn ignores the scholarly verdict that most Americans from all classes and races backed the cause of “Cuba Libre”-but not the later decisions to vassalize the Caribbean island and colonize the Philippines. Of course, as an imperial bully, the United States had no right, in World War II, “to step forward as a defender of helpless countries.” Zinn thins the meaning of the biggest war in history down to its meanest components: profits for military industries, racism toward the Japanese, and the senseless destruction of enemy cities-from Dresden to Hiroshima. His chapter on that conflict does ring with a special passion; Zinn served as a bombardier in the European theater and the experience made him a lifelong pacifist. But the idea that Franklin Roosevelt and his aides were motivated both by realpolitik and by an abhorrence of fascism seems not to occur to him.