Progressive Media Advocates
Ed Rampell: As great as Bennett’s live numbers performed during the nightclub scenes are — and her singing and hoofing is worthy of Garland in all her glory — End of the Rainbow is a cautionary tale. Fame is no substitute for a rewarding personal life offstage and offscreen, with loving family, friends, lovers/spouses.
Julie Driscoll: I’m not a perfect parent, by far – but I didn’t raise wimps, and I certainly didn’t raise kids who would stand by in silence while a young woman was being brutalized.
Ed Rampell: What is Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Holländer) if not a rip-roaring ghost story, highly charged by greed, and lest we forget, sexual frisson?
Ed Rampell: Dreamgirls is a thoroughly enjoyable, rollicking, rocking journey down musical memory lane that tells a fictionalized history of 1960s/1970s Black pop music through, appropriately, the medium of Tom Krieger’s blitzkrieging music and dance, as skillfully choreographed by Rae Toledo.
David Riker: I began to think about what it means to live in the very epicenter of the American Dream, and feel not hope – but trapped. My focus shifted, and I began to imagine a film not simply about the borders of geography, but about human borders – of class, culture, attitudes, and ideas. This was the starting point for The Girl.
LA Progressive Competing for a Netroots Nation Booth – Dick and Sharon are trying to win a booth at the upcoming Netroots Nation Convention in San Jose, California
Ed Rampell: Don’t miss this inspiring theatrical adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, the rabble-rousing, pro-union Depression-era classic that, alas, remains as timely now as the day John Steinbeck wrote it in 1939.
Rudy Acuña: I still remember going round and round with broadcasters over Ken Burns’ special on World War II. As in the case of his documentaries on jazz and baseball, Mexican Americans and Latinos do not exist for Burns.
Peter Dreier: There were no hooded sheets, burning crosses, N-words, or “fag” jokes. But bigotry comes in various shades. Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony was ugly and unfunny.
Matthew McDermott: If a young worker views a restaurant job as a disappointing setback on the way to an illustrious professional career, she may be more likely to buck management.
Dave Zirin: It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the tributes to Dr. King by the NFL don’t include the time when he said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
JP Sotille: The American diet is now a mine-field of sickness, empty calories and chemical additives. And the number-crunching folks at Coca-Cola think this mine-field may blow-up in their faces.
Walter Brasch: I must confess now. While Stephen King, Aaron Sorkin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, and thousands of other great writers used coke or pot to get high and produce great works, I used steroids.
Irene Monroe: While some will contest that Tarantino is being well…Tarantino, and he means no disrespect, others argue that his privilege as a well-respected moneymaking white heterosexual male filmmaker gives him carte blanche to recklessly express his creative juices even if it reinscribes stereotypes that many feel Django does.
Peter Dreier: Eleanor Roosevelt, an important historical figure, has never been depicted in movies, including “Hyde Park on Hudson” accurately. It’s about time!
Michael Sigman: For post-postmodern nourishment, I’m keeping David Foster Wallace’s mighty novel Infinite Jest on my night table with the intention of reading at least 10 pages a week. It’s a long haul, but if I keep my resolve, I’ll be done by New Year’s 2015!
Steve Hochstadt: Our family likes to eat, make and give good food. Homemade jams, granola and pickles were exchanged; during frequent breaks in present-opening, we ate freshly baked coffee cakes, thanks to my nieces.
Walter Moss: With House Speaker John Boehner unable to convince uncompromising Republicans to give just a little to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” the lessons that Lincoln, Spielberg, Sandburg, and Kennedy have to offer seem more important than ever.
Tina Dupuy: I’m not even going to comment on Christ never envisioning his birthday plagued by obligatory tchotchke acquisitions; senseless seasonal slaughter of Douglas Firs; or the pointless battle about Wal-Mart greeters muttering “Happy Holidays” (a contraction of holy days) versus the more allegedly pious “Merry Christmas” to an indifferent public.
Dave Zirin: On the highest possible cultural platform, the NFL told the world that the death of a 22-year-old woman, the suicide of a player and the mental state of his teammates is secondary to the schedule.
Lawrence Wittner: In his latest novel, Edward Wilson — a U.S. Special Forces officer in the Vietnam War who subsequently became an expatriate, a British citizen, and a teacher in the UK — does help to illuminate the Cold War crisis of the early 1960s.
Marcy Winograd: Students cheered “LO-LA LO-LA LO-LA” during Lola Zola’s speech for sixth grade class president, showing full appreciation for Lola’s promise to extend recess for five minutes for rehydration.
Wa;ter Moss: The destruction, personal suffering, and tragedies caused by our recent Hurricane Sandy were not a repeat of the 1930s’ Dust Bowl, but they were close enough to remind us that we have ignored at our peril a basic historical lesson: Screw up the environment badly enough and it’ll come back to blow you away with a vengeance.
Steve Hochstadt: Maybe because it happens slowly, we don’t notice how often we must re-create our habits, our daily routines. Jobs change, neighbors move, and the great events of family life add and subtract loved ones from our lives.
Ed Rampell: We often label and lump the turmoil that swept America and the world with a series of assassinations, Civil Rights, the antiwar movement, Black Power, China’s Red Guard, the Prague Spring, feminism and so on under the broad rubric of “the ’60s.” Auteur Olivier Assayas’ Something in the Air sets the record straight, showing that the era’s radical fervor continued well into the 1970s.
Self-assured, goal oriented, eleven year-old Lola Zola tries to support her laid-off parents and her tuxedo cat Bowzer by going into business selling “magical” lemonade rumored to zap wrinkles and promote world peace.
Rev. Irene Monroe: First known as “water ballet,” synchronized swimming was thought of as a delicate, feminine and frivolous sport seen primarily as part of Hollywood musicals and Las Vegas acts that no real strong men would deign to engage in.
Randy Shaw: After watching a documentary on Jim McKay and the success of Wide World of Sports, I think another reason predominates: the emphasis on the “human drama of athletic competition” distinguishes the Olympics from other entertainment events.
This letter was written by an anonymous “fan” of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. It’s been posted and published on countless blogs and newspapers. But its such a good read it’s worth reposting. Enjoy. Dear Dr. Laura: Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your [...]
Kivi Niemi: The Olympics has moved past the idea that athletes can train and support themselves without compensation. It is time that the NCAA and universities share the pot of spoils they are making on the backs of primarily young underprivileged gifted athletes.
Dick Price: Thursday, a hundred or so veteran agitators gathered in Will Rogers Park on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills to protest the conjectured sale of the Los Angeles Times to Charles and David Koch, plutocrat owners of the $115-billion-annual-revenue Koch Industries, who have expressed interest in using the paper to spread their drown-government-in-the-bathtub invective.
Walter Brasch: The failure to maintain records in an easily searchable method continues to allow the DEP to withhold public information from the public by burying the requested data within piles of irrelevant documents, most of which need interpretation from scientists.
Brent Budowsky: Let’s escalate the effort to eliminate the backlog of benefits due to wounded warriors and disabled vets by devoting whatever resources are necessary to complete this mission, and enlisting a major business leader.
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