Getting My Irish Up

Drink responsibly, folks. Meanwhile, a few Ireland-inspired tunes from John Lennon and Glen Hansard, plus Paul Simon with Willie Nelson, Alex Chilton with the Box Tops, and a Guy Clark film.

For St. Paddy’s Day, I will note that I have been a fan of Glen Hansard, going back to his days with the so-called “second greatest band in Ireland” (The Frames)—maybe even before then, in The Commitments—and then, of course, with Once and his solo stylings since. So below we bring two prides of Ireland together, Glen (with Marketa) singing Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” And if you want more: here’s a link to him busking “Astral Weeks” on the streets of Dublin. Now: feel free to comment or subscribe—still free!

News and Politics

Stephen Colbert: “Despite vaccines becoming more available, there’s still one thing holding Americans back: Americans. A third of Republicans say they would not be vaccinated. Come on, Republicans! Not everything is political. How do we convince you that you want it? Would it feel safer if the vaccine was administered by an AR-15?”

Trevor Noah: “I don’t know why Trump isn’t promoting the vaccine. I mean, maybe he doesn’t want to help Joe Biden end the pandemic. You know, maybe he’s still trying to unload all that hydroxychloroquine that he bought last summer. But I can’t say I’m surprised that Trump isn’t making an effort to get people vaccinated. I mean, the man barely did his job when he had his job—you think he’s going to start working now? For free?”

Remember last week when one poll sent pundits into a frenzy claiming Biden’s “honeymoon” with the public was over? A new Politico/Morning Consult poll this morning finds his approval rating at a whopping 62% (Trump never came close to 50%) and his Covid stimulus bill backed by over 70%—even 44% of Republicans like it.

New survey from respected pollster Siena finds that most New Yorkers don’t want Cuomo to run for a fourth term—but they also don’t want him to resign now (50%-35%) and are pretty satisfied with his apology for sexual harassment (57%-32%). And women were slightly more in his corner, and liberals even more so.

Headline of the day, from the staid NY Times: “Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New Bodies” Subhed: “Their severed heads get around just fine until they regenerate perfectly functioning, parasite-free new bodies.”

Serious reports going around that Sen. Feinstein’s husband desperately wants Biden to appoint him to an ambassadorship in Europe and if that happens his wife will leave the Senate. Gov. Newsom stated this week that he would appoint a black woman if this happens.

You’ve no doubt read about the slaughter in Georgia where a young white male (what else?) killed eight in massage parlors, seven of them women and six of them Asian. Authorities looking into whether Asians were targeted (they do often make up majority of workers in certain such establishments). There have been nearly 3,800 reports of hate incidents targeting Asian-Americans nationwide since last March, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

We noted yesterday that laughable Daily Mail claim that Meghan Markle may run for president. Naturally the geniuses at Fox News asked Idiot Trump about it yesrerday, and he replied that if true he'd have an “even stronger feeling toward running” in the next election.

There’s a major NY Times piece just up on the largely unknown victims of the Agent Orange herbicide sprayed by the U.S. in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. Especially interesting for me, as the woman at the V.A. in Chicago, Maude DeVictor, who first alerted the military and government to the scale of damage to our own troops in Vietnam, was one of seven whistleblowers profile in my first book, Truth or Consequences.

The use of the herbicide in the neutral nation of Laos by the United States — secretly, illegally and in large amounts — remains one of the last untold stories of the American war in Southeast Asia. Decades later, even in official military records, the spraying of Laos is mentioned only in passing. When the Air Force in 1982 finally released its partially redacted official history of the defoliation campaign, Operation Ranch Hand, the three pages on Laos attracted almost no attention, other than a statement from Gen. William Westmoreland, a former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, that he knew nothing about it — although it was he who ordered it in the first place. Laos remained a forgotten footnote to a lost war.

Andy Borowitz imagines a positive scenario involving the GOP obsession with opposing everything Obama: “In an effort to overcome the nagging problem of vaccine hesitancy among Republicans, former President Barack Obama is appearing in a new video urging them not to take the coronavirus vaccine. Obama looks directly into the camera and says, ‘I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but now I’m reaching out to ask you for a special favor: to not take the vaccine. It would mean a lot to me and make me very happy.’ According to the CDC, since the Obama spot started airing, on Monday, requests for vaccines from members of the G.O.P. have skyrocketed, with Republicans reportedly lining up around the block at some vaccination sites.”

Elliott Page, star of Juno, is on the cover of this week’s TIME, and here is full article.

Politico newsletter: Fresh off the first big upgrade to Obamacare since its 2010 passage, Democrats are eyeing a much heavier and politically riskier lift: creating a government-run public health insurance option.

Democratic politics have moved left since centrist lawmakers jettisoned a public option from the Affordable Care Act legislation back in 2009. At the time, a government-run health plan was seen as too radical. But as progressive calls for a fully government-run “Medicare For All”-type system have gotten louder in the intervening years, the public option has become classic Biden middle ground — popular with independents and even some Republican voters.

Still, the public option has gotten little scrutiny, and Republican lawmakers and the health care industry are ready to unleash an all-out assault on the idea. Democratic leaders are treading lightly for now, well aware that three of the last four presidents saw divisive health care proposals during their first year in power contribute to electoral shellackings in their second.

Film

There’s a new doc about the great Guy Clark, about to be available at virtual cinemas and, one presumes, streaming. Here’s the trailer, above. Expect a lot of Townes and Lyle and Steve Earle and so on. Good company.

Ward Sutton at the New Yorker has some ideas for new “Middle-Aged” super-hero movies. Surely these will be on the way as the current 20 to 40 film market ages out. Here are three:

Noted: My film, Atomic Cover-up, will have its American premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30. Go here to read more, watch trailer, buy tix.

Music

On this day in 1957: Elvis bought Graceland. The original building had once been used by the Graceland Christian Church and was named after the builder's daughter, Grace Toof. Here Willie Nelson joins Paul Simon for his “Graceland.”

In 1967: Jimi Hendrix released “Purple Haze” in the UK. He had read Night of Light, a 1966 novel by Philip José Farmer, where sun spots produce a "purplish haze" which had a disorienting effect on the inhabitants of a distant planet.

And in 2010, Alex Chilton of Box Tops and Big Star fame died at the age of 59. I attended Big Star’s “coming out party” on a docked riverboat in Memphis in 1973 at the first and last Rock ‘n Roll Writers Convention. Frankly, not too impressed with Big Star then, or later—first couple of albums too “poppy” But loved the Box Tops, as below, with “Crty Like a Baby.” Plus here they are reunited and doing “The Letter” at the World Trade Center…less than two months before 9/11.

Song Picks of the Day

Long before U2’s famous “Sunday Bloody Sunday” some British cat named Lennon wrote his own song—pretty obscure then and now—with that same title on the tragic Derry massacre. Here with rough 1972 backing from Elephant’s Memory, it might remind you of a far better known song, “Come Together.”

He also recorded for the same controversial album of that period, Some Time in New York City, the ballad, “The Luck of the Irish,” here, below, with Yoko live on TV. The album, judged too political by critics and fans, sold poorly. The Rolling Stone reviewer warned of “incipient artistic suicide.” At Crawdaddy, he gave us the lyrics to this song which we published before its release. His bud McCartney later weighed in with Wings ditty “Give Ireland Back to the Irish.”

Greg Mitchell’s film, Atomic Cover-up, will have its American premiere at the Cinequest Film festival March 20-30. Go here to read more, watch trailer, buy tix. He is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.