ADULTS.

Adults did this. Adults did this to a 13-year-old child born to a crack-addicted mother, on national television.

From Dave Holmes’ X-Factor recap on Vulture:

Rachel hears her name and literally falls to the ground in sobs that put Drew’s to shame. Her mother runs out to embrace her, and Rachel screams: “Mommy, you promised! You promised me!”

It is, no exaggeration, the most excruciating thing I have ever seen on television.

If you haven’t seen this show, and you’re wondering what this moment is like, imagine taking a precocious, impoverished child, dangling $5 million in front of her face, and then yanking it away from her on live television because a Pussycat Doll doesn’t want to damage her brand by making a decision. It’s almost exactly like that.

Steve Jones is clearly getting instructions in his earpiece to ask Rachel what she’s feeling, because he says loudly and clearly right into his microphone: NO.

Somewhere in this sad, sordid, tacky episode is a metaphor for what America has become. I just don’t know what the fuck it is.

The X Factor Recap: Witness the Most Excruciating Moment on Reality TV (Vulture)
 

 
Massive Attack’s Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke thoughtfully discuss the impact of the Occupy movement. Recorded outside of the Occupy London Xmas Party on December 6th, where both men DJ’d to show their appreciation for the movement’s efforts.
 

 
Elvis Costello and The Attractions appeared on Saturday Night Live on December 17, 1977 as a last minute replacement for The Sex Pistols, who had run into problems getting into the USA because of some prior legal hassles in the UK. Costello’s performance on SNLwould become the stuff of rock and roll legend.

Costello’s record label, Columbia, wanted him to perform “Less Than Zero”, the first single from his as yet unreleased (in the U.S.) debut album My Aim Is True. Elvis wanted to perform “Radio Radio,” his attack on corporate control of the airwaves - a punk move that would have been in the spirit of The Pistols. Columbia disapproved and SNL producer Lorne Michaels allegedly also did not want the song performed as per orders from his employer NBC. Costello was told in no uncertain terms not to play the song.

Come showtime, the band started playing “Less Than Zero” and then abruptly stopped and shifted into “Radio Radio.” At the end of the tune, they defiantly walked off the set.

Michaels was furious. According to first hand accounts, he was flipping Costello the bird through the entire performance. Michaels ended up banning Costello from ever performing again on SNL. The ban lasted 12 years, which in TV years is an eternity. SNL was an essential promotional venue for jacking up a band’s record sales. Costello bit the hand that was supposed to feed him even before he even got a nibble of commercial success. In the long run, it didn’t stop him from becoming one of rock’s enduring forces.
 

 
Elvis and The Attractions do a killer version of “Radio Radio” in Detroit six months after SNL banning. Check it out after the jump…

“If Newt Gingrich can betray a woman who swore her loyalty to him for the rest of her life—not once but TWICE—what makes you think he won’t betray you, the faceless voter in a sea of faceless voters?”

That question is asked at the conclusion of a blistering viral video critique of Gingrich that an Iowa pastor named Cary Gordon is making sure gets around. From the LA Times:

Gordon is sending the video via text message to every registered Republican or non-aligned Iowa voter with a cellphone on record. He says it is necessary because Gingrich’s favorability rating among Iowa Christians “keeps going up and up.”

Gordon, who leads the 1,000-member Cornerstone Church in Sioux City, Iowa, says he feels he must speak out against Gingrich because “he terrifies me” as a potential leader without a strong moral compass.

You an’ me, both, Rev, but don’t get me wrong, I think Molotov Mitchell, the homophobic birther who made this video (and plenty of others) for WorldNetDaily, is a complete fuckwit and his presence here on DM is in no way an endorsement of his lame reactionary shtick, still I must admit to, uh, agreeing with a lot of this one.

As surprising as it is that I concur with something (in bold strokes) that Molotov Mitchell came up with, I guess one thing about Newton Leroy Gingrich that that can be said with absolute certitude is that he brings Americans of EVERY DEMOGRAPHIC together!

It occurred to me watching this that Gingrich is actually a lot closer to being “THE JOHN EDWARDS OF THE GOP” than its Kim Kardashian, although that one’s pretty on target, too, of course. Ponder for a second what sort of damage it would do to Gingrich’s campaign if a meme comparing him to the universally loathed two-time Democratic presidential candidate and former senator gained traction in Iowa?

I mean on an axis of adultery, cancer and extreme narcissism, Gingrich and John Edwards are two peas in the same morally bankrupt pod, aren’t they?

Odd that none of Newt’s GOP opponents have decided to run with an Edwards/Gingrich comparison. But, hey, if any of them want it, they can have it for free!
 

 
German TV. Man hums “O sole mio”, well, holds a note, but you couldn’t ask for more, as 15 cars drive over him. Don’t try this at home.

Taken from Wetten, dass…?, the longest-running and most successful Saturday night TV show in Europe, which was until recently presented by Thomas Gottschalk, who finds contestants willing to carry out impossible feats for a bet.
 

 
Via b3ta
 

 
Patrick Meighan is “a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom Family Guy, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.” He also was arrested by the LAPD at the Occupy Los Angele encampment at City Hall. He’s posted the story of what happened when the camp was upended and of his experiences in jail.

His conclusions about the experience are not to be missed:

Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.

As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as “the LAPD’s finest hour.”

So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let’s talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.

Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, “a collection of dogshit”. To investors, however, they called it, quote, “an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser”.

This is fraud, and it’s a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that’s why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it’s also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.

Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade’s-worth of gains overnight, this is why.

If your son’s middle school has added furlough days because the school district can’t afford to keep its doors open for a full school year, this is why.

If your daughter has come out of college with a degree only to discover that there are no jobs for her, this is why.

But back to Charles Prince. For his four years of in charge of massive, repeated fraud at Citigroup, he received fifty-three million dollars in salary and also received another ninety-four million dollars in stock holdings. What Charles Prince has *not* received is a pair of zipcuffs. The nerves in his thumb are fine. No cop has thrown Charles Prince into the pavement, face-first. Each and every peaceful, nonviolent Occupy LA protester arrested last week has has spent more time sleeping on a jail floor than every single Charles Prince on Wall Street, combined.

The more I think about that, the madder I get. What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?

In any event, believe it or not, I’m really not angry that I got arrested. I chose to get arrested. And I’m not even angry that the mayor and the LAPD decided to give non-violent protestors like me a little extra shiv in jail (although I’m not especially grateful for it either).

I’m just really angry that every single Charles Prince wasn’t in jail with me.

My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan
 

 

 
Via Crooks and Liars

 
The über-hipsters over at Bitchfork (er, I mean Pitchfork) have put together a list of the 20 worst album covers of 2011 and here’s two that got a chuckle out of me. Shit and Shat.

To see the rest go to Pitchfork’s website.
 

 

 
James Fallows posts some excerpts at The Atlantic from an essay, recently published in China, that takes issue with the way that much of the initial Chinese media coverage of Occupy Wall Street depicted the protest as, in Fallows words, “...yet another sign of America’s decadence and imminent collapse.”

Democracy clearly has its flaws, but OWS shows not the defects of democracy but its advantages. That protestors do not “go missing” [as they have this year in China] is thanks to the benefits of democracy, and the lack of violent conflict or loss of social order is an example of its accomplishments. The US government has not condemned nor suppressed, but rather sympathised* with the movement, nor have the crowds challenged the legitimacy of the government or the democratic system itself. Rather, OWS is happening precisely within that democratic framework.

In other words: we must change our perspective and see this demonstration as a rational expression of democracy, and the normal activity of a healthy society rather than the upheaval of it.

A Fascinating Chinese View of the Occupy Movement (The Atlantic)