Teh Socials
The ignominy of remaining on Elon Musk’s Twitter is becoming too much. As luck would have it I got an invite for Bluesky on the day that the Chief Twit renamed his hopelessly broken, hilariously over-leveraged former public square, “X.” John Scalzi wrote a pissed-off and slightly elegiac blog post about the community that many of us have lost through this one idiot billionaire’s “emperor has no clothes” debacle, and how and when to disentangle one’s writerly platform from that dumpster fire. We could go on about how Musk will be an immediate business school case study for taking the value of a unique, universally-known and globally-appreciated brand and absolutely trashing it in exchange for a symbol best known for porn and/or the button you press on your computer whenever you want to leave something, but… well, actually, I kind of want to talk about the latter! With the switchover […]
Back On My Bullshit
Hello, Internet. I’m blogging again. Or possibly not. I’m starting to re-work my website, in anticipation of my next book. My first website, hosted on a comrade’s server, probably began around 1998. I called it “Why Did Shaun Richman Create This Homepage?” and mostly used it to store pictures, audio files, an occasional written piece for a couple of years. In 2005, I took a break from union work and revamped the website to try this new-fangled “blogging” thing. I registered a domain name, shaunrichman.org (.org because I’m not running my life at a profit; Ha!) and that same comrade, Don Doumakes, hosted and helped me set up Bloxsom software to host it. For several years, I reviewed books, movies and records. I wrote political pieces, vaguely-biographical journal posts and generally tried to hone my craft with an eye towards eventually publishing. At some point, I returned to active union […]
2018 Year in Review: A Tweet Thread
First, a little cheat. @MosheMarvit & I landed an op-ed in the @nytimes a few days before New Years last year. American Workers Need Better Job Protections https://t.co/qZwf2VdmSL — Shaun Richman (@Ess_Dog) December 27, 2018
That Time I Was (Willingly) on Fox News
On a slow news day in March of 2002, I was the token socialist for a roundtable segment on the “O’Reilly Factor.” I think they destroyed the tape, because I haven’t been able to find it on any transcription service. When Fox News still handled this stuff themselves, they claimed there was 12 hours of missing footage from the day – conveniently including the live show and its late-night re-run. Anyway, with some help I was able to dig up this transcript. What’s interesting is how much has – and hasn’t – changed. What hasn’t changed is that Bill O’Reilly has always been a full-of-shit asshole. Even when we went to commercial, he continued to be a sanctimonious prick. What has changed is that nobody could get away with denying the very existence of poverty in America today. And it would be hard to dismissively say “there aren’t a lot […]
Bernie Sanders Wasn’t Our First Socialist Mayor: Remembering Milwaukee’s Socialist Party History
As the country’s politics take a right turn, an unlikely progressive wins office as mayor of a major U.S. city. In an era marked by conformity and the primacy of business interests over the common good, he has the temerity to call himself a socialist. Both locally and nationally, his example serves as a beacon of hope for the waning left and a lightening rod of criticism for the resurgent right. His fundamental decency and fealty to the democratic process and the public good see him continually reelected, with most voters regarding him on a first-name basis. He goes on to run a quixotic campaign for President. If this sounds familiar to fans of Bernie Sanders’ career, it should. But I am describing Frank Zeidler, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee who served three terms from 1948-1960. When the producers of the television series Happy Days wanted to cast a nostalgic […]
Why “Comrade?”
A friend and, dare I say, comrade wrote me and asked why I use the word “comrade” so freely, instead of the more accepted “brother” and “sister.” Won’t people associate you with James Bond villains and bomb-throwing radicals when you use that word? And it’s true. I do throw it around a good deal, both as a warm expression of solidarity and friendship and, a little bit, to make people a bit uncomfortable in otherwise stodgy rooms. Fuck it; I’ve already been blown up by Fox News for being dangerously un-American, so why pretend to be a safer person than I am? Besides, saying “brother” or “sister” instead of comrade is one of those bits of American exceptionalism, like not celebrating Labor Day on May 1 or calling football “soccer,” that really ought to be resisted as a matter of global solidarity. Comrade is the preferred salutation of the labor […]
Tuli’s Archives
Gothamist has a pretty incredible story about some newly discovered Bob Dylan lyrics, to a song-never-recorded about Robert Moses. It’s easy to assume that the lyrics sheet is a hoax. But, because, it was discovered in the Tuli Kupferberg files, I’m inclined to regard it as legit. Tuli was a true American character. He was a member of the musical avant garde jug-band the Fugs, an early progenitor of the Village underground, a leftist and a proto-zinester. I first learned of him when, accompanied by a (paid!) intern, I poured through David McReynolds’ archives to find suitable material for the Socialist Party’s 100th anniversary conference journal. McReynolds was a long time leader of the SP, a pacifist and student of Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, a two-time candidate for President (I managed his second campaign in 2000; his first, in 1980, is purportedly the first time that an openly gay […]
The Sandpiper Serves as Lookout Against the Ferals.
I’m taking a mental health day; smoking a cigar on the fire escape. I bought my Padron at the Humidor, a neighborhood spot where the old men can smoke their stogies on the leather couches inside. They’re watching coverage of the Greek elections like it’s a soccer game. I’m not sure which side they’re on. I take the opportunity to refill our bird feeders. Bay Ridge doesn’t have a lot of bio-diversity. We get lots of finches and the occasional mourning dove. Lately there’s been a couple of sand pipers to enliven the scene. They’re beautiful. Their tail feathers are slightly robotic in motion. I hear a bird whistling like an alarm. Is she pissed that I won’t vacate the fire escape so she and her comrades can enjoy the new snacks we’ve laid out for them? I notice it’s one of the sand pipers alerting all the other birds […]