FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Out of Step (with the world): Anderson Cooper’s 1995 News Segment on Straight Edge
10.10.2018
03:01 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
I’m a person just like you, but I’ve got better things to do…
 
Ian Mackaye never intended to lead the straight edge revolution. Songs like “I’m Straight” and “Keep it Clean” prove that the punks had restraint before the Dischord-boom. That being said, Ian’s high school band Teen Idles did put out the Minor Disturbance EP, their only release, with younger brother, Alec MacKaye’s valiant, X’d up fists on its cover. The X’s, now a symbol of the anti-inebriation subculture, was meant to signify that he was underage and therefore “incapable” of drinking. In 1981, Ian’s DC-hardcore band Minor Threat released its fundamental, self-titled debut EP - on it included the moniker song “Straight Edge.” During a time when being a punk meant sniffing glue (“Just Say No”), Ian wrote a forty-six second statement about how you could be “straight” and still be like everybody else. So yeah, Ian Mackaye pretty much is the Godfather of straight edge.
 

 
Bands like Youth of Today, SS Decontrol, Gorilla Biscuits, and 7Seconds helped promote the core values of straight edge. Those being that one could rebel through self-control and individuality. And for punk rock, which already was reactionary toward the excesses and hedonism of the boomer generation, being straight edge was yet another way to resist the mainstream. At least I can fucking think…..
 
In the mid-to-late nineties, straight edge caught wide appeal. By this point, newer variations of hardcore began to embrace a lifetime commitment to a substance-free existence. Vegetarianism and social justice issues were integrated into its list of convictions and newer, more radical takes on the subculture began to appear. Hardline was a faction of vegan straight edge that promoted its oftentimes conservative judgements through imposition and direct action, even if by any means necessary. “Hate edge” militant gangs and crews formed, most notably in places like Salt Lake City and Reno, where McDonald’s locations were being firebombed and fellow punks were getting jumped for smoking and drinking. So naturally, the parents of America got concerned.
 

Youth of Today - the most straight edge band?
 
Similar to its interpretation of punk a decade prior, the media had a hard time comprehending the straight edge phenomena. Described as a “strange development,” several local news outlets across the country ran investigative reports into the drug-free hXc lifestyle and what it meant for our communities. Should I be concerned if my son is a straight edger? Mostly no, according to multiple reports, although a few of them profiled the animal liberation guerrilla efforts of hardline activists and the growing wave of violence committed by them. Straight edge was soon the subject of an episode of America’s Most Wanted and even on the daytime talk show Rolonda, in 1997.
 
Back in 1995, CNN’s Anderson Cooper was a correspondent for ABC News. That same year, he traveled to Syracuse, NY to report on a growing youth movement known as “straight edge.” The segment is introduced with shocking new evidence that teenage use of marijuana and illegal drugs is on the rise. Notwithstanding, rookie newscaster Anderson Cooper had supposedly “discovered a small, but growing group of young people who are refusing to engage in such self-destructing behavior.” Among them were brothers Trevor and Justin, the center of our cultural probe, who came upon a drug-free lifestyle to protest the self-indulgence of their generation, and of those past. Cooper narrates the report, but can be seen around the two-minute mark, sitting within a pow-wow discussion group of X’d up hardcore teens.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bennett Kogon
|
10.10.2018
03:01 pm
|
Crackpot apocalypse prophet William Tapley on CNN
06.09.2011
11:57 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
William Tapley, the 71-year-old retired furniture engineer from Forestport, NY and self-described “Co-prophet of the End Times” and “Third Eagle of the Apocalypse” actually made it on to CNN the other day.

And here, I thought he was just another obscure Christian crackpot making preposterous “biblical” predictions in YouTube videos, that we and a few other sites linked to just to goof on him…

Now, Billy the Tap is goin’ international!

Even though Tapley is, of course, being ridiculed here, I’m sure in his mind, this will be interpreted as a good thing anyway, because his God’s message will be “getting out there” more. Even though he must get slammed with “you’re an idiot” type comments and emails all day long, I’ve never seen Tapley address the subject of people ridiculing him. I guess he’d have to be impervious to Internet hecklers in his role as “Co-prophet of the End Times” and “Third Eagle of the Apocalypse.”

All part of God’s plan… All part of the plan!
 

 
More William Tapley on Dangerous Minds

If You Use Condoms, You Will Not Be Raptured

Via Christian Nightmares

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.09.2011
11:57 am
|
Dr. George Rekers: American Mengele?


 
This story is do distasteful, twisted and nasty, it’s hard to know where to begin…

There was a piece on Anderson Cooper 360º last night that was so shocking to me, I was simply dumbfounded by what I was seeing. It’s sad. Oh, is it sad. And infuriating. It’s that in spades.

Fundamentalist Christian leader, anti-gay activist and infamous hirer of male prostitutes, Dr. George Rekers, who foundered the Family Research Council (with Dr. James Dobson) was the lead in the grotesque mind-rape of an innocent child—not just one child, several—in a bizarre psychological experiment at UCLA in the 70s called the “Feminine Boy Project.” Boys as young as 4-years-old were trusted with this creep by parents who were worried that their sons would turn out to be “sissies,” looking for a “cure” for this behavior.

When you watch this, you’ll want to cry. It was child abuse, pure and simple, under cover of “science” and administered by a self-loathing gay man with severe psychological issues of his own. When Rekers was caught in his “rent boy” scandal, with male prostitute Jo-Vanni Roman in 2010, Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote: “Thanks to Rekers’ clownish public exposure, we now know that his professional judgments are windows into his cracked psyche, not gay people’s. But…his excursions into public policy have had real and damaging consequences on a large swath of Americans.”

Like young Kirk Murphy, whose life was ruined by Rekers’ sick Pavlovian “therapy.” From CNN:

Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for. He put himself through school. He had a successful 8-year career in the Air Force. After the service, he landed a high profile position with an American finance company in India.

But in 2003 at age 38, Kirk Murphy took his own life.

A co-worker found him hanging from the fan of his apartment in New Delhi. His family has struggled for years to understand what happened.

“I used to spend so much time thinking, why would he kill himself at the age of 38? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Kirk’s sister, Maris Murphy. “What I now think is I don’t know how he made it that long.”

After Kirk’s death, Maris started a search that would uncover a dark family secret. That secret revealed itself during a phone conversation with her older brother Mark, who mentioned his distrust of any kind of therapy.

“Don’t you remember all that crap we went through at UCLA?” he asked her. Maris was too young to remember the details, but Mark remembered it vividly as a low point in their lives.

It’s a pity Kirk didn’t live long enough to see Rekers’ disgrace, downfall and the complete discrediting of his life’s work by the scientific community. He is a pariah now, even in the Christian conservative community, something he so richly deserves, but. humiliation isn’t enough for a guy like George Rekers. Humiliation is too kind for a monster of his caliber.

Imagine what it’s like to Google your own name and see yourself compared to Josef Mengele THOUSANDS of times? I hope that more of his victims and their families come forward like the Murphy family has and publicly denounce this evil man. He should be investigated, his degrees should be stripped from him, and I sure hope that he’s wrapped up in expensive lawsuits from his victims that will ruin what is left of his time on this planet.

Perhaps it’s impolite to say this, but it’s too bad that Kirk didn’t take George Rekers with him when he killed himself, but I doubt that I was the only one thinking it, watching this.

Maris Murphy,  said it best:

“The research has a postscript that needs to be added,” she said. “That is that Kirk Andrew Murphy was Kraig and he was gay, and he committed suicide.”

“I want people to remember that this was a little boy who deserved protection, respect and unconditional love,” his sister said. “I don’t want him to be remembered as a science experiment. He was a person.”

This is some powerful reporting. Anderson Cooper and his team did a great job with this explosive story.
 

 

 
Therapy to change ‘feminine’ boy created a troubled man, family says (CNN)
 
Via Little Green Footballs

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.08.2011
12:14 pm
|
Anderson Cooper vs. Scientology
03.28.2010
04:19 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image

Anderson Cooper is launching a weeklong investigative series about Scientology tomorrow. Looks excellent.

Anderson Cooper is launching a weeklong series about Scientology Monday, covering many of the allegations against the controversial religion already reported by RadarOnline.com.

Anderson Cooper 360, the CNN anchor’s nightly news show, is looking at Scientology’s “history of violence,” especially allegations that leader – and Tom Cruise best friend – David Miscavige has personally physically abused his followers.

Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, son of actress Anne Archer, is interviewed by Cooper and claims that while there has been violence committed against members in the elite Sea Organization, the guilty offenders are those very people now making allegations against Miscavige.

Scientology is increasingly coming under attack by top-ranking members who’ve left the organization.  Interestingly, none of the top Hollywood stars who support Scientology, including Cruise, John Travolta, Jenna Elfman and Kirstie Alley, have commented.

(Radar Online: Anderson Cooper tackles Scientology)

(Anderson Cooper: Dispatches from the Edge)

Posted by Jason Louv
|
03.28.2010
04:19 pm
|