BAD STUFFS
S IS FOR "SLOPPY SOUNES" :
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Some weeks back in yonder distant place I borrowed a book from my buddy The Great L.C. He had recently read it and asked if I’d like to do the same. It was written by Howard Sounes and titled ‘DOWN THE HIGHWAY: The Life Of Bob Dylan’. Well, I have been listening to some of Dylan’s music since I was 17 or 18, but I had never before read a biography about him.
It turns out that Dylan is a womanizing weirdo - a musical genius to be sure, but also a womanizing weirdo. And the book was nuttin’ flashy but plenty informative. However, there were a few instances of really sloppy researching that irritated me. For instance, on page 324 it is written:
Bob met his old college friend Dave Whitaker after a concert in Oakland, California, in mid-November, and spoke to Dave’s eleven-year-old son, Ubi. “Would you send me a guitar?” asked the kid. The next day a truck pulled up with a gift from Dylan – a brand new Fender Stratocaster decorated with quotations from the Book of Paul.
On page number one of ‘The Dictionary Of Cultural Literacy’ it says, “No one in the English-speaking world can be considered literate without a basic knowledge of the Bible”.
Well, evidently the author Howard Sounes is illiterate. I have read The Bible many times but I have yet to find “the Book of Paul” in any version of The Bible that has passed before my eyes.
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Paul did indeed write the majority of the “books” of The New Testament, such as the Book of Romans, the Book of Philippians, Colossians, Corinthians I & II, etc. But nowhere in any Bible is there anything known as “the book of Paul”. I guess author Sounes has spent more time reading the important stuffs in Rolling Stone ragazine than he has reading The Word Of God.
What really ticked me off was the usual Liberal falsehoods about the late great Senator McCarthy. But I don’t suppose we could expect any Rock music writer to be any more careful with his information about McCarthy than he is with his information about The Bible.
On page 55 he writes:
To show Bob what they were struggling against, Whitaker took him to see ‘Operation Abolition’, a propaganda film in support of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.
OK, what’s wrong with that? Anyone? There is a glaring flaw in that sentence, and it has nothing to do with calling a film in support of McCarthy “propaganda”.
Here’s a very, very basic civics lesson for y’all: In the United States of America, we have a bicameral legislative system. The legislature consists of two branches: the Senate and the House Of Representatives. Senators are NOT Congressmen from the House Of Representatives and Congressmen from the House Of Representatives are NOT Senators.
Now it’s true that there was an Un-American Activities Committee in the House Of Representatives, hence the name “HOUSE Un-American Activities Committee” or “HUAC” for short. But will someone please explain to me how it could have been led by a Senator? How could it have been “Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee” if McCarthy was a Senator and this was a committee in the House Of Representatives? It couldn’t have been, and it wasn’t! It’s a good thing Sounes is writing about a Rock musician, because if he were writing about anything more important than that he’d have been blistered on his buns by someone in the media for such sloppy reporting.
And then later, on page 71, Sounes again shows his total ignorance about Senator McCarthy when he writes:
By 1951, due to the McCarthy blacklist, The Weavers were effectively put out of business because of their radical left-wing politics.
The McCarthy blacklist? Another blatant falsehood perpetuated by the Left for half a century. I have probably read every important book ever written about McCarthy, and McCarthy had no “blacklist”! McCarthy had no association with Hollyweird and the entertainment fields; he was solely involved in investigating subversives who had infiltrated the U.S. government and were therefore “security risks”. Anyone who faults McCarthy for any performers being “blacklisted”, whether in the movie or music industries or any other entertainment field, that person doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about.
Indeed the HUAC interviewed suspected Communists in entertainment and, as a result, Hollyweird got nervous and decided to clean its own house by “blacklisting” certain individuals. But again, none of that was related to McCarthy’s investigations in the Senate. McCarthy was looking into government agencies and the U.S. Military and he never strayed into public arenas such as the music recording industry and flaky-wacky Hollywood.
Sheesh! Never send a Rock music writer to do a religious or political writer’s job!
Le McQuote Du Jour:
I do not think we need fear too much about the Communists dropping atomic bombs on Washington. They would kill too many of their friends that way.
~ Super-Senator McCarthy
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Doggtor of Semiliterate, Half-Naked Blogological Studies
Stream O’Consciousness University at Salamander Station, Saharagobi
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