contact
us
HERE
7/18/22 BenQQ) Never one to let go when it benefits it, the Sunday 7/17/22 Commercial Appeal raised yet another divisive and arguably incomplete story from a woke scribbler working for the paper's parent company, USA Today.
In a review about the new Elvis movie, Neledi Ushe draws on the social criticism that white rock 'n rollers “appropriated”--meaning stole--black music. The story entitled “Appropriation or Appreciation” should have been '...or Assimilation'. Even as a side element, it managed to ignore how different cultures always eventually mix despite differences.
The crux of the article and criticism of the movie is Elvis wouldn't be Elvis if America's segregated society at the time had not kept the major black music artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino out of the dominant white market.
Sure, you can make the case, but at most its one of those fun history exercises of what the country might have looked like had it not been racially segregated. What in history might have been different? Answer: everything, from politics to personal relationships to racial identity itself. By that I mean the blending of races to the point where racial identity was not even a thing. But, unfortunately, it was a thing. And there is an incentive to keep it a political, financial and social thing today.
Another thing is clear: now people, at least some quoted in the article, hate (or at least resent) Elvis for having “white privilege” that, they argue, enabled him to be crowned “King of Rock 'n Roll” at the expense of other black music greats.
Little Richard argued he would have been king if the big picture of race had been different.
One guy in the article said whites were always looking for a “Great White Hope” to keep a black from becoming king. Honestly, growing up in Memphis, I never once came across that sentiment.
On the other hand...
At the time Elvis was just beginning to play to crowds in Memphis, someone told him he should play like the black musicians in a local club. He apparently started playing that way. He liked it. His audiences liked it.
Is that the only evidence to support the article's contention that Elvis' music was not “natural” like that of blacks?
Related, does music at some point after singing it a lot in your own voice become 'naturalized' and natural?
Finally, does being a white writer from a lower middle class background automatically define your work as “unnatural” as current anti-Elvis writers (apparently there are a few) would have you conclude?
If some or all that is true, I would argue the music industry in good woke consciousness should pull the contracts with white artists doing hip hop.
What Elvis did and what black artists couldn't do at the time was establish a mass market of young music fans over radio and early TV. Are you experienced enough to remember Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show? If you had a TV set at the time in Memphis, you probably watched it totally unaware someone much later would attribute theft of a music genre to the outrageously new singer.
You watched because he was a local boy who got on national TV.
A popular huge market willing to spend money on sumptuous full color LPs - - one had multiple pages of fantastic Elvis portraits - - and buy tickets to massive concerts did not really exist before Elvis.
Finally, perhaps a more journalistically interesting, but less politically sensational, story is how white and black music rapidly “assimilitated” to create one thriving rock n roll music genre—just like the country, if you will.
Someone at the CA should have stopped and asked, “Hey wait a minute. What about all the times black musicians borrowed from white musicians? Doesn't that at least merit a paragraph?”
Example: Aretha Franklin performing “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” that became a big hit with blacks and was written by two Jewish boys from New York (Simon and Garfunkel).
History we cannot avoid exists. If Elvis had a statue in Memphis, some people would want to pull it down. Elvis would be a symbol of old white culture despite the fact that he nor his fans had any particular antipathy toward blacks.
But in today's woke environment, because Elvis benefited personally from segregation that kept black competitors off the main stage, whites are now guilty of the broad racial crimes of the last century.
The modern agenda now reaching for Elvis and the broader culture that set him up as "King of Rock 'n Roll" are like Madame Mao's Social Revolutionaries. Tear down and rebuild.
If this meme of Elvis as symbolic of white culture, what is Memphis to do with its annual “Elvis Week?” Corporately enough, they could change it to “Music History Week.”
(BenQQ 1.20.25) Here are 30 policies and objectives specifically mentioned in President Donald J. Trump's inauguration speech this morning:
In another speech, Trump said he had made a deal with Tic Toc, the Chinese social media site, that the US government would own 50% of it in order for it to continue operations in the US.
(1.19.24 BenQQ) Announcing on X.com Donald Trump announced a new agency he has in mind: the External Revenue Service. Democrats have already started poo-pooing it because it will be funded by tariffs and other sources of income. Will he mention it in his inauguration tomorrow?
In fact, say the Dems, Trump's plan to eliminate the income tax is actually just his "silly rebranding" strategy to raise your taxes to benefit the rich.
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued the following statement in response to Trump's idea: “No amount of silly rebranding will hide the fact that Trump is planning a multi-trillion-dollar tax hike on American families and small businesses to pay for another round of tax handouts to the rich.”
That was the entirety of his response, thus proving Democrats have ingrained opposition to relieving Americans from the tax system as we know it. He made no further content. No willingness to even consider the possibility of supporting the "ERS" on a trial basis. If ever there was cold feet of tax payers voting for Trump, Wyden in the not unusual Democratic disconnect, inadvertently warmed them up. Currently, Americans must submit their financials to any one of thousands of possibly biased IRS employees who demand compliance on penalty of imprisonment for not following a maze of IRS regulations so complex even tax professionals don't understand them. Trump is the first president in modern history to propose complete tax relief.
Trump's idea in fact was at least shown to be workable in American history. The US government raised money at the top of the twentieth century without an income tax until 1913. Personal income tax was started during the war and has since never left burdening Americans earning an income.
Unknown at least here is what the government does at time of war or other national emergencies. Possibly one hopes some form of a universal sales tax would apply then. The External Revenue Service must be passed by congress.
(1.5.24 BenQQ) During just 4 years of Biden/Harris their cavalcade of catastrophic decisions and ill intent have resulted in policies that will long brand the Democratic Party as unthinking ideologues salivating over power and their followers as gullible pawns who never watched or read independent or opposing media that would force them to think about opposing concepts. Never mind its the role of so called professional media to do that anyway. That media could care less if under Biden-Harris regarding...
-Your dollar fell in purchasing power
-At their virtual passive and active invitation of Biden/Harris, Millions of illegal immigrants flooded into the country to soak up jobs for Americans. Then taxpayers had to pay for that outrage to cover more expenditures from municipal, state and federal tax dollars. It is estimated it will cost $100 billion to administer mass deportation. Expect to hear wails of oppression, fascism and class division from the Democratic elites who had plans to bank the migrant votes.
-With their, in effect, open border policies, Biden/Harris allowed the penetration of vicious drug and human trafficking cartels to set up operations in all major cities to corrupt officials and buy-off politicians in the same way they do throughout South America. Like any city, Memphis is not immune to their pestilence.
-Terrorists cells crossing the border with abandon while government agencies such as the FBI were busy targeting activist PTA parents and political opponents to the Democratic abuses. The result: security experts say there are hostile foreign operators waiting for a strike order.
-The literal magical creation that Trump and the millions of people who supported him were fascists and deplorables. As a backdrop to his speech casting Trump and supporters as threats to democracy, Biden colored the hallowed Independence Hall in red with American military personnel as props. Certainly looked fascist to me.
-Thus laying the ground work for the worst corruption of the legal system--which Identified these practitioners as the real fascists and not their targets--ever mounted by a political party in power: lawfare.
-The corruption of the electoral system. With the unchallenged 2024 election of Donald Trump in both electoral and majority vote, trust in the election system could be considered temporarily restored but not protected without a national voter ID card. Leaving it to the states will continue to invite cheating because parochial politics will never go away. In that regard, Trump was denied his days in local courts to make the case the 2020 election was, in his words, “rigged,” despite activist research, authors and reports.
-Due to Biden/Harris projection of weakness and aversion to leadership, Russia started a European war, Iranian proxies fired missiles into shipping lanes and China threatens a new war in the pacific.
-Biden pardons and commutes some of the blood-thirstiest killers ever after pardoning his son for his crimes including managing an international play-for-pay schemes that financially benefited his family. See my one minute video Its All in the Family elsewhere on this page.
-And then to cap it all off with a cherry on top Biden gives the medal of freedom award to individuals who not only donated heavily to his campaigns but to political partisans who betrayed Americans fighting for their lives in Benghazi.
He still has over a dozen days to go. No telling what we’ll see.
Are these the worst results of an administration ever in American history? Perhaps, but I don’t want to waste time talking about it. Historians will write books about it, both pro and con.
The only question we need to ask is how could it happen? How could it happen that the lowest quality people get into the White House and **** things up so royally. I mean they think of themselves as royals, beyond the reach of average Americans and act like it.
One part of the answer is they know how to manipulate average Americans—especially with the help of their supportive partisan media. Little was ever covered objectively—and when it was it had an obviously biased skew against Trump--not only of course in media like MSNBC, CNN, the TV broadcast networks, etc, but in local media as well. In Memphis, you just didn’t hear any critical reports about, for example, Trump’s impeachments though the district’s Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen made the media rounds rarely unchallenged that Trump was a racist and crook. The worst reporting interviewing no doubt because the market here is composed of Democrats. Media consumers never heard a critical reportorial word to the contrary from local media.
Let’s see what happens during Trump’s term with media reporting.
Comment: This will not appear in a video because the YouTube algorhythm and blues doesn’t like it. I’ve been bounced before.
(BenQQ 12.25.24 script) Two suspicious house fires occurred in north Memphis within sight of each other in the last 3 months. One was on my property and the other was on another house of my neighbor. One person who talked to that neighbor said a gas can was found next to his burned structure.
I suspect the blaze on my property was started by humans by mistake or intentionally. I tend to lean to the latter because the structure had no roof after a tree fell on it during a storm. (Video above is 90 seconds.)
No one was hurt and the Memphis Fire Department lost no time in knocking the blaze down. Reportedly an arsonist struck a building off Summer Ave. recently.
After pardoning and commuting (let's call them P&Cs) the sentences of some 1500, including coming over the transom today, murderers. His P&Cs even included a convicted judge who gave long sentences to kids for juvenile incarceration in exchange for kickbacks from the company holding them. As with most of his decisions throughout his administration, they were inexplicable unless Biden thought such acts would endear him with his base, which it probably did.
While pardons and commutations are standard for presidents and governors, they are not a duty to perform as if by some sort of quota. Biden's wholesale display of "compassion" compounds the devastation these criminals brought to the families. One kid reportedly killed himself as a result of his ordeal created by the judge, claims his mother.
The latest reporting on the mystery drones: they are looking for nuclear materials. For reasons of how radiation is spread, among others, here is one guy whom I follow and who I think is qualified to speak on the subject. Ryan McBeth, says no, drones are not looking for nuclear weapon or weapons in New Jersey.
A bigger danger is government either deceiving, deflecting and/or dismissively defecating on its people who pay its bills, that is, in one way or another, you. We lower case democrats almost always think that's bad. In rare conditions, like in war, espionage and word salads, the government might need to do that. Biden and Kamala have made that--that being propaganda for their gullible members--an art form. Trump supporters are least likely to accept their bull****. The good news is even Democrats may never accept it again--no matter what their media tell them to do.
Trump’s 3 biggest issues, now all at a crisis point thanks to Biden's uncritical voters who consume Democratic media, are the financials (i.e. the economy), illegal aliens and foreign wars. There are some issues lower down on the list in my opinion as well such as the weaponization of government and other issues that Trump should handled in short order soon.
At any rate, get the economy right by unleashing a growth economy where people can make more money. This will have salutary effect across the board--as it did for workers and businesses in Trump's first term. Remember my story on Tennessee businesses who were giving their workers bonuses and raises? Maybe you don't, but I do. If the Democrats don't again try to undermine Trump's policies, I expect it to happen again.
Finally, tied to the economy, there is another "unleashing" going on, that is, unleashing a military buildup, specifically technological buildup, to keep China and Russia at bay. Thanks to Biden's weak foreign policy and signals it would be OK with him if Russia invaded Ukraine and China invaded Taiwan, we have been thrown into a cold war teetering on hot. Putin and Xi want to expand into Europe and Asia respectively. This will assuredly cause regional or even world wars. However Trump has postured the "peace thru strength" foreign policy ethos. One hopes it is not too late to get these tyrannical nations under control. Otherwise, kiss it all goodbye.
But let's all remember one thing: this picture of that bloated nation eater Joseph Goering rubbing his hands greedily. He's ready to chow down on another country, in this case Czechoslovakia, with the approval of Britain and France. The historic parallels to Ukraine and Taiwan could not be more obvious. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland because some Germans lived in it. Putin wants Ukraine because some Russians live in it. Xi wants Taiwan on the same pretext.
That brings up Trump's camouflaged position on just how much he would support Ukraine. I don't think he will turn out to be this guy who will waive a piece of paper because a blood thirsty tyrant agreed to sign it in order to persuade other that said tyrant would stop his invasions.
Ok, that guy waving the paper is British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after he just got assurance Hitler would stop invading Europe if he just got this one little thing. I hope somebody around Trump is telling him how much more a world war will cost the average American MORE than the billions we've already spent helping to keep Putin's greedy fingers off Ukraine and the rest of Europe. I don't expect Trump to go on about a people's right to defend their democracy, country or even existence. He seems to act like Putin's aggression and crimes are like a very bad weather event.
Trump doesn't seem to be wired ideologically but only commercially but that's not a bad thing. He's wired like a CEO and the country is his company. In my opinion he is not likely to break from that model. However, unlike Chamberlain above, I don't expect him to give away the farm but I won't be surprised if he makes some sort of shabby deal with Russia that will leave a Neville Chamberlain taste. Also, there will be tons of memes of Trump's face inlaid over Chamberlain's.
Speaking of Trump, once his reform juggernaut kicks in, blindsided recovering Democrats and whiney RINOS will be thrown against a wall. The Trump train will lurch forward and pick up speed. Some media will unctuously join in, some will charge fascism and others will simply cut back staff in anticipation of fewer consumers who will discover Trump is not at all what they said he would be if elected. Well, he's elected. All Aboard...
That's it for today folks. I'll try to get another feed out in a week or so. Merry Christmas.
XXX