Wednesday 10 January 2018

Lana Del Radiohead

Good morning!

Upon hearing the news that...

...Lana Del Rey...
..may be sued for...

...plagiarism...
...by...

...Radiohead..,
...several thoughts had occurred to me.

1.  Creep?

Creep?!
Why Creep?  Of all Radiohead songs, that's probably the most cliché of them at all.  While it may, may, lend itself well to Del Rey's mopey nihilist vibe, there are better songs she could have ripped off.

2.  Why plagiarize when you could just do a whole Radiohead cover album?  When you really think about the substance of their work, they're more similar than different.  While the...

...medium may...
...vary slightly...
...the gist of their works are surprisingly similar.  And, hell, even the media aren't that different.  One is...

...artsy fartsy to the point of silliness...
...and the other is...

...artsy fartsy to the point of silliness.
I think you'd have a mighty fine track listing if you put some thought into it.  Might I suggest:

1    Stop Whispering
2    Black Star
3    Exit Music (For a Film)
4    Morning Bell
5    Knives Out
6    A Punchup at a Wedding
7    House of Cards
8    Morning Mr. Magpie
9    Desert Island Disk
10  And Then Maybe Creep As A Bonus Track (If You Really, Absolutely Have To)

3.  In fact, why fight at all?  Odd pairings are sometimes quite harmonious.  I mean you could fight it out like...

...old codgers...
,,,and...

...young punks...
...but it's far more effective to work together.

For example:

Aerosmith/Run-DMC: Groundbreaking.

Bowie/Crosby: Iconic.

Costello/Roots: Insightful.

Franz Ferdinand/Sparks: Weird and wonderful.
And honestly, between you and me, the Elvis Costello / Roots album...


...is an absolute treasure.  Anger and thoughtfulness are two difficult things to balance and they pull it off masterfully... right up until the last track.  Then the cheese slides off the cracker a bit.  Likewise, FFS (Franz Ferdinand/Sparks) is one of those team-ups that seems extremely odd... until you listen to it.  Birds of a feather, those two are and the world is a better place with their joint, self-titled album.
"Supergroup", indeed!
So, really, why spend money on lawyers when you could make money on artistry?  It's a fair question to ask.

Just a shame the world never got to see a Robert Goulet/Iggy Azalea diss track....  Aw well.  Thanks very much for reading and...
...have a lovely day!

Thursday 4 January 2018

A Rebel Hops Along

Good evening!

The Editorial Board of Raccoon Inc. is mystified about this one.

So... like...

...these jerks...
...and... like...

...this jerk..?
...  Seriously?
Total mind explosion.
I suppose the question in my mind, or what's left of it after finding out this exciting new career opportunity for Hopkins, is simply...


I mean, you could say that birds of a feather and all, but at the same time, it seems a little too easy, doesn't it?  You know...
...way back in the day...
...there was a time when I had a sort of kind of appreciation for the work that The Rebel was doing, or at least attempting to do.  In between...

...the Amazing Exploding C...
...and the others...
...the other others...
...and the other other others...
...there were holes and gaps that real news slipped through.  And there's a public interest for news, tough news, that challenges conventional thoughts, regardless of ideology or political spectrum positioning.  News that'll bite anyone's ankle to get to an ugly truth.  Years ago there were stories of theirs that you could read and sort of say to yourself..,

"You are not wrong, sir.  You are not wrong."
However, over time The Rebel just got...
...uglier...

...and uglier...

...and uglier.
And now this...

Yoy.
See, here's the thing.  After The Rebel's coverage of the fatal Charlottesville protests...

...seen here...
...The Rebel Commander was arsed into actually taking a kind of sort of stand against the far right.  Ezra sums up their position in three points:

1. We are not alt-right.  That term now effectively means racism, anti-semitism and tolerance of neo-Nazism.

Not racist?  Your newest correspondent...

...seen here...
...has stated, quote...

"Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches."

Not anti-semetic?  Gavin McInnes...

...seen here (and no kidding!)...
...wasn't forced to walk the plank by the Rebel Commander, he left of his own volition.  On the contrary, Levant stated that "we tried to keep him".  He left them!  It was time, in his words, "to move on".  And move on he did.


Please continue to stay off his non-geek lawn, though.  Please don't gofundhim, donate, subscribe, patreonize.  Please.
Not tolerant of neo-Nazism?  

Faith Goldy...

...seen here...
...hung out with the neo-Nazi side of the equation in Charolettesville.  You can mask it or spin it whichever way you want to, but...
...this happened.
Unlike McInnes, however, Faith did indeed walk the plank.

Apparantly, appearing on the Daily Goddamn Stormer was just one bridge too far.
So, you know, 10 points for that.  There is a bottom to this pit after all.

It ain't here.
It ain't here, either.
It's all the way down here.
2. We are conservatives (as opposed to socialists); we are nationalists (as opposed to globalists); we believe in having borders (as opposed to Merkel- and Trudeau-style immigration); we are opposed to identity politics inherent in state multiculturalism and affirmative action (and we do not support countervailing white nationalism as a response).  So we are different from the alt-right in many ways.

This seems to be a distinction without difference.  In many ways?  They are Nationalist Conversationalists as opposed to Nationalist Socialists?  Trudeau's Canada does indeed yet have borders.  I don't think that I could drive or fly to Chicago without facing some sort of mild to moderate impediment at or before the 49th parallel.  So what's the difference?  Nationalists, but not countervailing white nationalists?  This is a mighty fine line.  A little too fine, methinks.

3. Finally, we are aware that the alt-right, as it is now constituted and led, is an obscure, small, ineffective movement.  Their Charlottesville march, that had national media coverage for weeks in advance, mustered fewer than 500 people altogether.  They held no elected office, hold no prominent positions in academia, media, or any other institution.  Their chief political utility is to the left: to prove the leftist narrative that the "true threat" in America is actually from "right wing white guys", as opposed to, say, Muslim extremism or Latin American drug gangs.  And to the Soros-funded street gangs of the left, the alt-right is a justification for violence - it's an excuse for more chaos anf fear that are Antifa's signature.

Obscure?

They're trying their damnedest not to be.
And they are succeeding.
Ineffective?

I submit this as an effect.  There are more.  It is effective.
They hold no elected office?

Well, perhaps not elected, but appointed.
No prominent positions in media?

Faith Goldy only wishes she could have a regular Saturday morning gig on Fox News.
Though each of these people listed here didn't march in Charlottesville, make no mistake: they are the enablers.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, one of those fewer-than-500 people present was...

...a Rebel correspondent.
The Rebel's "staff memo" in their defense is absolute hogwash.  Counter-spin and hogwash.  It's a tap-dance disguised as a staff memo by Levant who was caught dead-to-rights by the consequences of his actions.  He stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back.  The camel's back had been broken.

The moral of this story is that there is a Rebel Media somewhere in that mess that actually serves a public good.  Levant's kind of sort of apology contains that little kernel.

"Simply covering controversial figures doesn’t mean we agree with those controversial figures.  It means we’re covering the news, not just covering Justin Trudeau’s socks."

You see, there's the money.  That's the stuff that a guy can get behind.  That's the place that I, and presumably other reasonable people, feel that The Rebel should hold in the public discourse.  Indeed, that's the place where they themselves say that they want to be.  If the coining of the phrase "Media Party" isn't a wake-up call to mainstream media, it bloody well should be.  Goodness knows, Trudeau's socks are...
...very...
...well...
...served...
...indeed.
But they just can't do it, can they?  They can't just be satisfied with giving a voice to the stories that are shoved off the page by the prime minister's footwear.  They can't do it.  They won't do it.  Instead they gotta...
...nuzzle right up and into this crap.
Levant has admitted:

"I'm a flawed leader who has made mistakes."

"I need help."

"I think we need more oversight - not more censorship - just to make sure we're really being on brand with what we believe, what we stand for."


Sorry, that's not conservative, that's just racist.

The Editorial Board expects this nonsense from Hopkins.

The Editorial Board expects better from Levant.

Good night.