Holy jeez, gang, has it really been ten years already? Phew, now that really makes me feel old. Luckily for me, fiftysomething is the new thirtysomething…or something.

So, when I was asked to design the poster for the Seattle/WTO Tenth Anniversary event here in DC, there was only one thing to do — another parody of a famous work of art, in this case, a classic of Kitsch Americana, Archibald Willard’s iconic Spirit Of ’76, the hit of the show at the 1876 Columbian Exposition.

But, aaa-aaaanyway…the big do is on Monday, November 30, at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in Adams-Morgan, 1725 Columbia Road NW, at 7pm; it’s a fund raiser for the Washington Peace Center and the Funk The War Alumni Association (for all you ex-college kids who are too old for SDS, but still want to get funky). There’ll be the obligatory drinking and party-mix grooves, of course. There’ll also be some vintage Seattle/WTO rebellion video running, because we really loves us some anarchy.

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So, hit the copy shop, mix up the paste, grab your rollers, and hit the streets, kids, and I’ll see yer butts down at Chief Ike’s on N30!

Continue reading "The Spirit of ’99" »

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Just so we’re on the same page, here: community organizing group ACORN registered large numbers of black voters in Chicago for the last big “election”. As is common in many registration campaigns, there’s a fair number of wise-asses registering dead peoples’ names, or fake names. Also, as is required by law by boards of elections in any US city I’ve been to, any bogus/invalid registrations are reported, to keep the voter rolls cleared of all the dead people, and all those Luke Skywalkers and Donald Ducks.

So, anyway, outfits like the Drudge Report (has anybody informed that bonehead that the ’90s are over?) get hold of this and, in their own predictable, inimitable fashion, proceed to blow this up into some kind of bogus “scandal” and throw it to the rightist k00k crowd like so much fresh, raw meat. Still, you’ve got to love Drudge, if only because he carries on in the finest shrieking tabloid tradition — never let the facts get in the way of a good story — along with providing us all with some good cheap laffs.

Now, just to refresh your memories, one more time, here’s the video of a small group of black youth selling little plastic flags at the September 12 Teabaggers’ rally being threatened and harassed, and accused of being “ACORN People” (as if there were something wrong with that in and of itself)…

Continue reading "Radio Hate" »

At the Capitol Hill Teabaggers’ Rally this past July 4th, I spotted more than a few signs saying “Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone”, and it got me thinking, what vast new entrepreneurial opportunities have been denied owing to government regulations and petty tyrannies such as the Clean Water Act, The Pure Food And Drug Act, or the Glass-Steagall Act…?

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Continue reading "Capitalism Works Best When Left Alone" »

The recent Teabaggers’ Shindig over at Senate Park(viewable above) has certainly left me inspired, to say the least. Never did I hear a gang of astroturfers yell more loudly about not being astroturfers even as they were funded by big, fat rightist PACs run by characters like Tom DeLay and Dick Armey, and never did I hear more yelling from a group about how they aren’t about Left or Right, even while they never missed an opportunity to slag the Left — or even on ordinary Liberals, for that matter — as the lot it was my fortune to cover this past Fourth Of July.

Even more hilarious was their total ignorance of the causes and effects of events that happened before January 20, 2009 — forgetting, for instance, that the current corporate bailout fiasco was pushed by George W. Bush. Listening to the howls from the stage and checking out the composition of the crowd, it was as if the single reaction from the Teabagger Massmind boiled down to “OMFG, the President is a N1GG3R!” — like the old-timer in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, hollering from the top of the church steeple, “Here comes the new sheriff, and he’s a big…” …and it sure as hell didn’t help any as their event was organized and staged by members of a well-known White Power band, Pokerface.

So, considering all this, I thought to myself, “Self, it’s time you did a poster that announces the imminent arrival of the National Teabaggers’ Convention coming to town on the 12th of September, and maybe inspire some of the local anarchists and antifascists to organize a little welcoming committee.” So, I did.

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Organic cotton t-shirt at cafepress.com, $17.99

Continue reading "Teabagger" »