RightNation.US Blog (Mike Austin) Version 1.0

Music Comes Back To The Grammys

Perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps it was a reflection of the black hole of the current state of popular music, but the 2005 Grammy Awards was a fresh musical fish out of stagnant, tone-deaf water. Last night, the giant shadow of the brilliant (and deceased) Ray Charles towered over the festivities, giving a somber yet anchoring tone to the event. In fact, the Grammys...

The View From Europe: The Media is Not Amused These Days

I haven't been around here for awhile. One reason is that I've been over in Europe, specifically Italy, with stops in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and, mon Dieu! France. And while I was there, it couldn't have been a worse time for the Bush-haters. While many Europeans have adopted a "live-and-let-live" resignation that "Cowboy" Bush (hint: Um, when are you Euros going to realize that calling an American a "Cowboy" is not an insult, but...

Random Thoughts About The Tsunami Tragedy

The tsunami tragedy that has impacted the world during the past week is only now beginning to be understood. We've only begun to catch our breaths after witnessing the horror of the death and destruction, and finally feeling like the relief efforts are in place to some degree. A lot has been written and said about this event, far too much to encapsulate anywhere, but after going through the past week, here are a few largely-unrelated, almost random thoughts, on various aspects of...

Facing Christmas

Of all the major holidays (and holy days), I don't think any other holiday even begins to approach Christmas in the dichotomy being so popular yet so disparate. And for that matter, Christmas isn't the easiest holiday to respond to. For example, Easter, Christendom's premier holy day, despite its fathomless spiritualism, is quite direct: the single act of atonement for humanity's sins. Likewise most Jewish holidays depict singular events and have a relatively unchanging cadre of...

This Is Original (Unlike Hollywood These Days)

Well, at least they had an exuse - I mean, it's hard to spend time on quality moviemaking when Hollywood was diverting its attention to campaigning full time against the apocalyptical evils of George W. Bush: The Sequel which nevertheless will be opening this January 20th to (mostly) rave reviews. But even so, you begin to wonder why original movies are as common in Hollywood these days as Republicans. Furthermore, when it's remembered that the Writers' Guild of...

The Story of Al Burt

Mostly everyone enjoys turning to Christmas (note, not "winter holiday", "seasonal", "festive", "winter", nor any ACLU-approved godless substitutes) music at this time of year, and I'm no exception. In fact, being an accomplished pianist, one of my favorite things to do is to play traditional Christmas music for friends and family this time of year. Like June for bridal shops, December is usually good pickin's for musicians. Seems that everyone has...

Thanksgiving

With undue respect to history "genius" Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director, and Cupertino, California Stevens Creek School Principal Patricia Vidmar and others of the same incredibly buffoonish mindset, I dedicate...

Moving Into Thanksgiving - One Year Later

A year ago (November 20, 2003), the world was a little different. John Kerry had just finished voting against the $87 billion aid for Iraq after voting for it. President Bush's popularity was sinking, further damaged by a seemingly pie-in-the-sky pledge to give power to an interim Iraqi government by early 2004; dire warnings were...

What Makes The "Entertainment Culture" So Dumb?

Now that the great party celebrating a complete, total, and from-all-demographics-not-just-"moral-values" Republican 2004 election victory is winding down (aww, gee!), the analysis begins. One viable hypothesis is that the "Hollywood culture" of the Michael Moore's, Bill Mahr's, Bruce Springsteen's and the like, not only didn't help their Democratic heroes, but actually performed their worst nightmare - actually caused the other guy...

What's The Value of Discussing Moral Values?

As the Democratic/Liberal self-flagellation begins to wind down, we've begun to see these self-indulgent post-mortems being displaced by a new and ugly strain of thought. Liberal pundits, knocked stupid by not only the election, but by a puzzling (to them) voter focus on "moral values," have begun to fire back with silly, if not ominous, mutterings of "right-wing jihad" and "evangelical hijacking" ad infinitum. The usual gang of...