What Did Paula Deen Say

What Did Paula Deen Say, Bill Maher and Paula Deen are unlikely allies, but the former — an outspoken and often offensive political comedian — is stepping up to ostensibly defend Paula after her recent racism brouhaha.

Bill Maher is no stranger to being silenced, perhaps why he can identify in part with what Paula Deen is going through. In 2001, he was canned from ABC and lost his long-running Politically Incorrect show simply for pointing out that whatever one thinks about the actions of the 9/11 hijackers, they weren’t cowardly. He’s since quipped that he is the only person who was fired after 9/11, and he has gone on to far greater success with his HBO show.

Maher’s defense of Paula Deen is also surprising given his vocal distaste for American trash-cuisine, and while he admits to liking foods that are unhealthy, he also frequently opines that Americans are digging graves with “knives and forks,” suggesting that the country medicates issues that can be addressed in part without shoving food just like the stuff Paula Deen cooks into our face holes at every given opportunity.

But Maher’s Paula Deen defense is not because he agrees with what she said — on the contrary, while unafraid of offense, the comic is certainly openly critical of America’s racial divide — but rather the way it was handled.

On his show last night, Bill Maher again brought up Paula Deen, in a very watch-worthy clip about how we discuss matters of race, racism, and why banning words is not the answer.

Maher suggested Antonin Scalia and Donald Trump are far more racist than Paula Deen may be, but they get to keep their jobs because we, in his opinion, have substituted saying the word in question for a real conversation about what actually harms black people.

According to Maher, as a for instance, Scalia’s description of the Voting Rights Amendment as a “racial entitlement” is a far worse transgression — he explained last night:

“Just the fact that he talks about black people voting as an entitlement, that is so much more racist than anything Paula Deen ever said.”

Marijuana Legalization

Marijuana Legalization, It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of “Reefer Madness” to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of “Just Say No.”

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously “didn’t inhale,” to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

And now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug – for medical use and just for fun.

It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:

_People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug’s potential dangers, particularly for young people.

_States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.

_Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.

“It’s a remarkable story historically,” he says. “But as a matter of public policy, it’s a little worrisome. It’s intriguing, it’s interesting, it’s good that liberalization is occurring, but it is a little worrisome.”

More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.

“We’re on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance,” says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

“I’m constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself,” he says.

Mongolian Overtone Singing

Mongolian Overtone Singing, Sometime between 1946 and 1950, a Mongolian overtone singer named Chimiddorzh Ghanzhuryin stepped into a state-controlled recording studio and cut a few sides for preservation on a brittle, shellac 78-rpm record. Perhaps this opportunity came about after Ghanzhuryin had sung at a local festival, wowing crowds with his ability to sing a duet with himself diaphonically. Whatever the case, he left the world of recorded sound a much richer place with his pastoral, meditative vocals. One of his songs, “Gunan Kor”, rereleased in 1996 on The Secret Museum of Mankind, Vol. 3, stands apart from the other 23 tracks on the disc, which come from every imaginable port on earth. The voice seems to lift out of the singer’s body, soaring not unlike the eagles of his home country, surveying the landscape in patient, breathtaking groans or high-pitched plumes of pure expression. To hear it for the first time is to be stopped cold by recorded sound in a way not previously imagined.

The sounds Ghanzhuryin put to wax some half century ago had in fact been a part of life on the vast plateaus, where snow-capped mountains and huge lakes formed a constant backdrop. Shepherds and shamans of Mongolia, which lies in the heart of Central Asia, just above China, and its smaller northern neighbor, Tuva, had been singing in such a way for centuries. The style, known as “throat” singing, but, more precisely called overtone singing—the ability to single out and control overtones, phrasing them two or more at a time—finally became known to audiences outside of this rarely visited, steppe-locked place at the dawn of the 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed and Westerners flocked to find this music. While everyone has natural harmonics in his or her voice, the people of this remote region were able to hone in on one of these harmonics, or overtones, create a drone with one overtone and then, vocally, grab a higher pitch, which shapes a melody on top, allowing them to sing duets with themselves.

Tuvans divide various overtone styles into three major types, all of which use nature to describe the sounds. Sygyt, for example, is simply an imitation of singing birds or gentle breezes. Xoomei tends to suggest stronger winds, while kargyraa portends storms. In fact, listen to the Smithsonian Folkways releases Tuva: Voices From the Center of Asiaor Tuva, Among the Spirits and you will find imitations of horses, birds, water and wind. No doubt, people this connected to nature realized that in the birds and rivers and rocks were the spirits. Overtone singing, then, was used shamanically. There are mountains in the region that are able to “hold” winds for hours or days before releasing them into the valleys below. As this happens, the mountains make sounds, “warning” people of the coming torrents. Rivers and waterfalls also create sound patterns that vary according to the rocks they hit; supposedly, the rivers and their sounds contain the origins of overtone singing.

One fairly well known Texas musician who had vocal qualities akin to overtone singing was gospel guitarist Blind Willie Johnson. Much of his vocal work seems to be the gruntings of a man with a bad cold, but at the drop of a hat he could shift into a gentle lullaby. Though this isn’t true overtone singing, it does give an idea of the timbres. Often, the voice is guttural and perhaps harsh at first listen. It almost seems to be the product of a dirge, perhaps even at home on an obscure heavy-metal record, but in a few more minutes it reveals its beauty.
Perhaps the music’s best-known current practitioner is Huun-Huur-Tu’s Kaigal-ool Khovalg. Because he and his quartet have been taking ancient Tuvan music across the globe for the past 13 years, he is largely responsible for its popularity. Albert Kuvezin, of Tuvan punk rockers Yat-Kha, is another. While his band cranks its music through massive amounts of electricity and doesn’t think twice about injecting its sets with rock ‘n’ roll covers, traditional instruments and throat singing are always front and center.

Credit must also be given to the Western fanatics who helped promote this music. Thanks to the fanaticism of Ralph Leighton and ethnomusicologist Ted Levin, who wrote the liner notes on several early ’90s Tuvan music collections, the West was able to listen for itself. Perhaps subconsciously, what makes overtone singing so fascinating is the fact that it has probably changed very little. It was simply the product of a people who learned to adapt and create in order to survive and as a result is a place where anthropology and ethnomusicology collide. Overtone singing is simply the sounds we all make, or are capable of making, to connect ourselves with nature. Perhaps this is why Chimiddorzh Ghanzhuryin’s humble performance all those years ago is still so stunning now.
—Bruce Miller

Gay Pride Parade

Gay Pride Parade, The annual colourful Dublin Gay Pride parade stretched right across Dublin city centre yesterday with an estimated 30,000 gays, lesbians and their supporters bringing a carnival atmosphere to the city centre.
The only hitch in an otherwise ecstatic parade came when a small number of ‘Jail the Bankers’ protesters demonstrating outside the GPO sat down in front of the Labour Gay Pride open-top bus.

The sit-down did not seem to cause any significant embarrassment for government ministers Ruairi Quinn and Joan Burton on the top deck and the bus moved on after about 10 minutes.

Special tributes were paid at the post-parade festival in Merrion Square to Senator David Norris – who last week announced he had cancer -for his pioneering of gay rights and the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.

This year’s parade is the high point of a 10-day festival to mark three lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender milestones – the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Irish Gay Movement; the 30th anniversary of the parade itself; and the 20th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.

The parade, led by a fire engine and charged with the usual exuberance and flamboyance, had as its focus this year the return of LGBT “brothers and sisters” who had left Ireland.

The organisers called on people who had emigrated “due to either poverty or persecution” to return to celebrate the “wonderful diverse and inclusive culture of modern Ireland”.

The motto for the parade and festival is: Live, Love, be Proud. The organisers anticipated an attendance of 30,000 based on previous years and gardai yesterday agreed that at least this number attended.

Gilbert Baker LGBT Flag

Gilbert Baker LGBT Flag, Gilbert Baker (b. June 21, 1951 in Chanute, Kansas) is an artist and civil rights activist who in 1978 designed the Rainbow Flag, sometimes called the Pride Flag, Gay Pride Flag, or, since the early 1990s, Queer Flag, that is often used as a symbol of gay pride in LGBT rights marches.

Baker served in the U.S. Army from 1970 to 1972. He was stationed in San Francisco at the beginning of the gay rights movement. After his honorable discharge from the military, he taught himself to sew. He used his skill to create banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. It was during this time that he met and became friends with Harvey Milk.

In 1979 he began work at Paramount Flag Company in San Francisco, then located on the southwest corner of Polk Street and Post Street in the Polk Gulch neighborhood. Baker has designed displays for Dianne Feinstein, the Premier of China, the presidents of France, Venezuela and the Philippines, the King of Spain, and many others. He also designed creations for numerous civic events and San Francisco Gay Pride. In 1984 he designed flags for the Democratic National Convention.

In 1994 Baker moved to New York City and continued his creative work and activism. That year he created the world’s largest flag (at that time) in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that took place in 1969.

In 2003, to commemorate the Rainbow Flag’s 25th anniversary, Baker created a Rainbow Flag that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West. After the commemoration, he sent sections of this flag to more than 100 cities around the world.

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