This date, too, will live in infamy.
That's because yesterday, hatred and bigotry won out.
That's all there is to it.
Yesterday, American voters- as a whole- chose to replace Barack Obama with a PROVEN racist/sexist/misogynist/homophobe/Islamophobe who's studied Adolf Hitler's speeches.
And they were aided and abetted by the reporters, producers, and executives from the nation's biggest media companies...as well as by FBI director James Comey.
Many claim they never saw this coming. But they might have forgotten about how, in 2010, voters joined with those Democrats who chose to stay home in giving the US House of Representatives back to the Republicans...and, four years later, repeated the process with this country's Senate.
Handing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue back to the Elephants was the next step.
Those who decided to go with Donald Trump just spat on the graves of all those American veterans who died during World War 2- people who gave up their lives in an effort to keep German/Italian/Japanese totalitarian rule from reaching America's shores.
So now, as early as 1-20-2017, Trump could call a fascist government.
I wouldn't put it past him, knowing his supersized ego.
It isn't as if we weren't warned, what with years of evidence that DJT doesn't give a hoot about rank-and-file citizens.
And when many of this country's Trump supporters find out he really doesn't give a crap about them, they'll express remorse over giving control of the US government to the one-time host of TV's The Apprentice...instead of letting one of the most qualified presidential nominees in history take the reins.
Those Trump supporters' eventual tears and sadness will prove useless and meaningless.
What's more, media personalities such as CNN's Dana Bash and NBC's Matt Lauer might privately express grief over allowing this con artist to become this year's Republican nominee, let alone the leader of the American people. And Bash's boss, Jeff Zucker (the same man who, when he was president of NBC Entertainment, got The Apprentice on the air), might eventually start expressing sadness...if only in private.
Me, I stopped watching corporate news programs the night of 11-4-2014. After all, news is news, not entertainment...contrary to what Zucker and CBS CEO Les Moonves teach.
But now, I'm going to stop watching ANYTHING the Big Media companies have to offer, now that this has happened.
They have to pay for their part in bringing eventual (if not immediate) full-fledged fascist rule to the United States...just as those voters who thought Trump would be better than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton must pay for their decision.
If you're just as worked up about what just took place at the polls as I am (and yes, I voted yesterday), then you're welcome to join me in this boycott of CBS', Comcast's, Disney's, News Corporation's, and Time Warner's shows.
Yesterday, America threw it all away.
With the whole world watching.
I was born in Iowa, raised in Iowa, and educated in Iowa.
And I'm ashamed that US Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was born in the Hawkeye State, too.
Matter of fact, I'm heavily ashamed.
I remember when he decided he wanted to go out for a seat in this country's House of Representatives.
The year was 2002, and King was seeking the seat that, at the time, was held by fellow Republican Tom Latham. (Redistricting sent Latham to head for another Iowa Congressional district to fight to keep his place in the US House.)
The reconfigured 5th District- the prize King was looking for- included Council Bluffs. (Meanwhile, Latham ended up having to fight another Republican incumbent, Greg Ganske, for the right to represent Iowa's 4th District.)
At the time, I read an Omaha World-Herald article that talked about one of King's early campaign stops...a church in Council Bluffs. In the article, it talked about how some African-American people were standing in the back of the same room where the then Iowa state senator was campaigning.
Storm Lake native King asked: "Is this the back of the bus?"
I thought to myself: "Jim...can you say 'red flag?'"
King (a state senator since 1997) went on to top three other GOP hopefuls in the 5th District's House primary; on 11-5-2002, he crushed his Democratic opponent, a Council Bluffs city council member named Paul Shomshor, 62%-38%.
SAK grabbed every county in the district except Pottawattamie...the one that contains Council Bluffs.
He went on to win the next four elections by landslides, winning reelection during that eight-year period by an average margin of 26.5%. In 2008 and 2010, King snared all 32 counties in his district.
Then came 2012.
Because of the 2010 Census, a House seat was taken away from the Hawkeye State. (Iowa's population grew by 4% between 2000 and 2010- not nearly enough of an increase to allow the state to keep five places in the 435-member House of Reps.)
While the new 3rd District (Southwest Iowa) resulted in Latham having to fight Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell for the right to represent it, the reshaped 4th District (Northwest Iowa) placed King in competition with Christie Vilsack, the former Iowa first lady who moved back to the state to try to kick King out of Congress.
King went forth, 53%-45%; then in 2014, he mowed down Jim Mowrer, 62%-38%.
You know what hurt about King's win over Vilsack?
Six months after launching his sixth term of office, the man who calls Kiron, IA home popped off about proposed immigration legislation: "For every [undocumented immigrant] who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds- and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert."
I cringed when I found out ol' Kingie said this.
*It wasn't the first time I cringed over something King said or did as a US representative. Three years earlier, King defended the use of racial profiling by law-enforcement officials: "It's not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying people that are violating the law."
*In an early (2005) House vote, King voted against the $52 billion package earmarked for victims of Hurricane Katrina. His excuse: "Whatever happened to fiscal responsibility?"
I'll bet the next time a major atmospheric disaster hits Northwest Iowa, Steven Arnold King- if he's still in the House- will be the first to scream for money to repair the damage (especially if a tornado levels Kiron).
*A lot of the information going into this post came from Wikipedia; because of wikipedia.org, I found out that King has a Dixie Swastika (oops...I mean Confederate flag) on his office desk.
Didn't somebody tell this man that Iowa was part of the Union during this country's Civil War?
*King's one of the many, many reasons the Republicans can't draw Latino/a/x American voters...thanks to remarks like this about HUD Secretary Julian Castro: "What does Julian Castro know? Does he know that I'm as Hispanic and Latino as he?"
Yeah, Steven.
And I'm Spongebob Squarepants.
*And how about Steve King's recent efforts to prevent Harriet Tubman's profile from replacing that of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill?
In trying to block this country's Treasury Department from modifying the currency, King called the attempt to put Tubman on the $20 "sexist" and "racist."
To him, it's not about the Underground Railroad's conductor. "It's about keeping the picture on the $20. Y'know? Why would you want to change that? I am a conservative. I like to keep what we have."
It's a good thing King was in high school in 1964 (the year he turned fifteen)...when Benjamin Franklin's profile on the half dollar was replaced with John F. Kennedy's. (But then, King probably wrote a letter to the editor of his high-school paper to complain about the change.)
*If you're not cringing along with me right now, maybe this is the tip of the iceberg for you: King's equally infamous remarks delivered at last week's Cleveland Hatefest (oops...I mean Republican National Convention).
Iowa's longest-tenured current US rep appeared on MSNBC's coverage of this year's GOP confab. He was part of a panel moderated by Chris Hayes (of All In fame); Esquire columnist Charles Pierce was there, too.
Pierce talked about how the 2016 Republican assembly could be the last one where "old White people would command the Republican Party's attention."
The message made King bristle, so he said: "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you are talking about? Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"
Well, if this gun-rights advocate from Northwest Iowa had calmed down for a little bit, he would've realized the Chinese gave the world gunpowder. And he would've come to understand that we use Arabic numerals (that's right, 0 through 9) in our everyday lives.
Plus, King would've come to dig that the corn harvester (what's Iowa without corn?) came from the mind of Henry Blair, a Marylander who came up with this invention in 1834.
Blair was the first African American (or one of the first) to receive a patent after coming up with an invention.
And all that's just scratching the surface.
So, there you have it. If you live in Sioux City, LeMars, Spencer, Storm Lake, Spirit Lake, or some other community in Northwest Iowa, ask yourself what Steven A. King has done for your House district...other than keeping it in the headlines.
Are you really proud to get "represented" by the man InsideGov labeled as the least productive member of Congress? (What legislation of his has King managed to get out of committee?)
What keeps you voting for this proven bigot?
Out of the 127 total artists on Billboard's Power 100 List for 2015, 15 of the acts were female. (Never mind that Lana Del Rey made the cover of the magazine the very week the list was published.)
PRS for Music found out that out of 95,000 composers and songwriters, just 13% were born female.
Less than 5% of established engineers and producers in the music industry are women.
When it comes to people in said profession making at least $30,000 per year, 22% of men in the field get to bring home that kind of bacon...but only 6% of women do.
And according to Creative & Cultural Skills, men have 68% of all the jobs in the music industry, women the remaining 32%.
All the jobs...and that, of course, includes Del Rey and other recording artists.
Seems as if, since the 20th Century came to an end, the percentage of women placing their tunes on Billboard's various US music charts has dwindled...even with Taylor Swift, Beyonce Knowles, Carrie Underwood, Iggy Azalea, and some other big names joining Del Rey at the top.
It's not just in rock or country or hip-hop/R&B [with hip-hop/R&B having a long history of being more paternalistic than the other aforementioned forms of music...which, in part, might be understandable when you consider the great lengths America's biggest social-and-cultural leaders (and leaders of other kinds) have gone to ever since the early 17th Century to treat African-American males as less than human beings, let alone as adults, in addition to denying any manhood in African-American males].
That's another can of worms in itself.
Anyway, I've noticed how the percentage of female performers competing in the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival (this year's event takes place in Oxford, MS, next month) has been evaporating since the current century got under way. (In 1999, seven female contestants went at it, at a time when the Holiday Inn Select in Decatur, IL, was the contest site; the next year, six did.) Thus far this year, only one woman- first-time Regular Division contestant Anita Malhotra, from Gatineau, QC, Canada- has pledged to go after the Big Money.
Last year, the final Illinois (East Peoria) OTPP iteration saw five female pianists- four in the Junior Division- step up to the challenge. And the Reg Division would've been a fraternity for the second straight year if contest coordinator Faye Ballard hadn't signed up to join JDs Nina Freeman, Megan Jobe, Mia Yara, and Amberlyn Aimone.
Besides being in a ragtime club here in the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area, I'm in the local chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society. When I joined the River City Theatre Organ Society in late 1984 (and subsequently got involved in ATOS, too), several women were concertizing all over at least the United States on Mighty Wurlitzers and on competing brands of theater pipe organs.
Since then, only Donna Parker and Patti Simon Zollman are still out there
...having outlasted equally-outstanding organists like Melissa Ambrose and Candi Carley-Roth. [In addition, death robbed the world of Edna Sellers (in 1989) and her daughter, Barbara Sellers Matranga (who passed away in 2014). And those deaths sandwiched that of Rosa Rio (in 2010).]
Been thinking about all of this for the last few days, and I've got just one question about all this:
"What in the world happened to put more women and girls on music's sidelines?"
Even with YouTube, Vimeo, and other video-oriented sites right here on the Web, the playing field (no pun intended) is still lopsided.
One of the factors skewing the whole situation came into prominence in the early 1980s.
That's right: Music videos.
Eventually, things got to the point where, if you wanted to sign a recording contract (especially if you were born with a vagina), you had to be some kind of attractive before given the chance to have something to say.
TV shows like American Idol haven't helped, either. On that now-deceased series, the judges found room for NFL-sized (and enormously-talented) Ruben Studdard, the show's 2003 champ.
Two years later, Missy, Mandy, and Erin Maynard tried out for the show...but Simon Cowell labeled the threesome as "too fat!"
Result: In today's music industry, there's no room for the Cass Elliots and Spanky McFarlands anymore. (Remember what happened to Carnie Wilson? Remember how she was treated, especially by video directors?)
Last year, Pitchfork senior editor Jessica Hopper put out a Twitter call that went like this:
The responses came by the hundreds.
I read every last one of them.
You talk about infuriating!
More often than not, this is what greets you if you're female and want to become a musician and/or vocalist. More often than not, some you-know-whats are going to tell you that you just don't belong...regardless of what you've got to say.
If you've ever been the parent of a daughter, what was your reaction when she told you that she wanted to play a musical instrument...especially one usually associated with boys?
If you're a music teacher at an elementary school (or at a middle school or a high school), if you've discouraged any female students from taking up the axes of their dreams (especially the instruments usually associated with male students), then you're part of the problem.
Admit it. Don't kid yourself.
If you've ever said or written "Girl bands suck" or "Chick bands suck," you're- let's face it- part of the problem.
It's long been time to encourage people who want to sing and/or play...regardless of gender. We need to hear as many voices as possible, and we need to take their efforts seriously.
Roughly half the people in this world are female...and music, among other activities, loses when women (and other marginalized people) aren't allowed to be heard.
After all, good is good.
You can find Hopper's Twitter call at https://storify.com/Laupina_/from-the-margins. And you're invited to visit coastalbeatsmedia.com/2016/03/29, where Gabby authored a fine post, "Editor's Essay: Women in the Music Industry," where I got some of the info found on the post you've been reading.
