Cartoons Sunday!

Reflections and refractions on the 250th plus Shaboozey, Billy Bragg and Beethoveh

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.

Tom Nichols:

If you had told me in the ‘80s that “YMCA“ would be played by a military band as a tribute to the sitting president of the United States, I would’ve assumed the story originated with some mischievous Soviet propagandist.

Some are already predicting this as the Pulitzer winner next year. Cheney Orr captured this in a Washington Metro car as the racist masked Patriots arrived for last night’s Trump rally.

Steve Brodner commented on the cowards:

And Dennis Goris:

Also on July 4: this Rolling Stone piece about my new film now streaming over PBS, “Woody Guthrie and the Ghost of Tom Joad Today.”

“Woody has been embraced by new generations, certainly at the No Kings protests and anti-ICE protests. He’s sort of everywhere.” Guthrie resonates, Mitchell said, because “he seems authentic. Most of the country is not left wing, but he had an incredible life, and he wrote all these great songs and lived it.”

Music Picks

You will enjoy Nigerian-American Shaboozey (a recent Grammy winner) at NPR’s Tiny Desk last week

Billy Bragg on Beethoven, politics, and why he re-wrote lyrics for “Ode to Joy” for today. About 15 years ago he did the same in a film I co-produced “Following the Ninth,” which was screened at dozens off cities and festivals around the world.

From Tunes to Toons

Anderson:

Ann Telnaes: Trump is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people”

Zyglis:

Kemensky: