The Red Scare

 

Milk (2008)

"Milk", starring Sean Penn and Josh Brolin is about San Fransisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, an openly gay businessman who had gotten sick of not only watching other gay people being harassed and bullied by a stiff city establishment but other minorities such as African Americans, the poor, elderly and people with disabilities being used as scapegoats and the first to suffer in any major city decision of that time. He not only stood up for the underdog, but he championed them. He put PEOPLE first - something a lot of politicians only pay lip service to. Milk actually did something about.

Milk transcends being a mere gay bio-film. While Milk's sexuality is never too far off, the real gist of the movie is how he gave the system a major wake up call and how he paid the ultimate price for standing up for what he believed in. From his beginnings as a flamboyant camera store owner in the Castro district of San Fransisco to the political battles he fought against the city and self-righteous anti-gay crusaders such as Anita Bryant to finally being elected city supervisor of San Fransisco and the turmoil that followed, especially from his biggest opponent, Dan White who assassinated Milk and San Fransisco Mayor George Moscone.

The story of Harvey Milk is a fascinating one for me, having read The Mayor Of Castro Street by Randy Shilts several years ago.

HIGHLY recommended reading!

I always loved his appeal to the social outcasts and how he worked to level the playing field for all people. We sure as hell could use a guy like him today.

One could only wonder what could have been had he not been assassinated. He most likely would have ended up mayor of San Fransisco and would probably have made it to Washington DC by now. I'd take Harvey Milk anyday over Diane Feinstein.

Harvey Milk never got the recognition he truly deserves for not only breaking down a LOT of doors and glass ceilings for gays and lesbians, but for inspiring all of us that the underdog can lose many battles, but still win the war in The Good Fight. The people know a true hero when they see one.

Days of Future Passed

Happy 4:20!

World's Oldest Kindle Prototype

Circa 1500's....Now THIS is a BOOK! Can be read 6 different ways!


http://peripheralpal.tumblr.com/post/74606743236/therhumboogie-from-national-library-of-sweden

The Star Wars Question & Answer Book About Computers (1983)

From The History's Dumpster Bookshelf......

More here ........

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Religion can make people do funny things. Like join them.

And in the '80s, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was one dubious character.

For me, It wasn't so much the fact he was this strange little Indian guru who came out of nowhere. I was open to new things even back then.

It was the fact he was simply just every bit of a flaming nutjob as Pat Robertson. And the scary fact there are people attracted to people like these is one I've never been able to live comfortably with.   

The Bhagwan came to America in 1981 and shortly located to a remote area in Northeast Oregon. He bought a big 64 acre ranch and decided to convert it into a mini-village for his thousand-strong faithful called Rajneeshpuram.

Naturally, your neighbours up and down the road are going to have a problem with this if you set a thousand-strong strange people out loose wandering around in an area of less than 400 - often driving the Bhagwan around in Rolls-Royces. His teachings were a bizarre mixture of Eastern philosophy, sexuality and material obsession.

I'm automatically suspicious of any religious leader that needs to ride around in fancy new cars while everyone else has to walk.

The extra population boost from Rajneesh's followers (along with the import of several thousand homeless people) eventually was big enough to overwhelm the nearby city of Antelope, OR and by 1984, the City of Antelope became the City of Rajneesh.

City of Rajneesh, 1985

The original residents were angry at the newcomers whom they saw as invaders.

The Rajneeshees also made a series of New Age music albums under the name Basho's Pond.

This album perfectly defines New Age music if you've never heard it before. Note the "audiophile quality virgin Teldec vinyl" and DMM mastering. It was meant to be played on higher end stereo equipment. Which by the time you're finished buying the stereo amplifier, tuner, speakers, CD player, CDs, cassette deck, cassettes, turntable and records, New Age music was essentially an $8,000 wind chime.
You can hear some of it here:   http://ghostcapital.blogspot.com/2012/12/chaitanya-hari-deuter-govindas-deva.htm

 

Now things were really getting weird. And so was the Bhagwan. First he encouraged free love....Then he backtracked when AIDS became a terrifying epidemic. There was no cure for HIV/AIDS (there still isn't.) And virtually nothing was known about it amongst the general population, only that it was only a "gay" disease (it isn't.) Gay people (especially gay men) were targets of persecution across the nation due to the AIDS scare. And there was no shelter to be found in the Rajneesh community for them. Rajneesh preached the same hateful rhetoric as the fundamentalist Christians. He also favoured euthanasia for children born with birth defects.

Things came to a nasty head however when it was revealed Rajneesh's followers were involved in a bio-terrorism plot. Their plan involved contaminating salad bars with salmonella at restaurants in The Dalles, OR in an attempt to thwart the local election in their candidate's favour by reducing local voter turnout. The plan backfired - more local people voted than ever and the FBI and INS quickly began to investigate. It was revealed they had salmonella in vials and a petri dish and Rajneesh and his aides quickly attempted to flee the country. Rajneesh was arrested on immigration charges. But not on the bio-terrorism charges. On a plea bargain, he eventually returned to India, where he changed his name to Osho. He died in 1990.

His ashram in India is still active..

Plaque in Antelope, OR which memorializes the Rajneesh "invasion".......

Everyone's Gotta Start Somewhere

Controversial Magazine Covers

With the controversy this week over the latest Rolling Stone cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I thought I'd take a look at shocking magazine covers. While this photo, a self pic taken by Tsarnaev on his cell phone had long been circulating on the internet and even made the front page of the New York Times in May....

....the same, untouched photo on the Rolling Stone cover caused outrage in the media. Prompting many in the media to accuse Rolling Stone of making Tsarnaev appear like a rock star, in spite of the New York Times and other outlets use of this same photo.

Let's take a look at a few other controversial magazine covers.

 

2012's Time cover of a mom breast feeding her 5 year old son disgusted everyone.

A famous TV star coming out on the cover of Time magazine wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, but 16 years ago in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres was dealt a backlash by several media outlets, many of them dropping her program. But to the horror of social conservatives, there was actually far more public praise for DeGeneres than criticism. Society's attitudes towards the LGBT community were already changing not towards mere tolerance. but full blown acceptance. Rapidly. And there was no turning back.  

 National Lampoon has always been known for it's edgy, often politically incorrect humour. But this 1973 cover crossed the line from edgy to cruel with many people. But since any publicity is good publicity for a humour magazine, they reprised this cover photo on the picture disc version of their 1977 LP That's Not Funny, That's Sick

 In the '60s, there was a book written titled The Death of God by Gabriel Vahanian that explored the objectification of God as a symbolic or cultural artifact. The book was never intended to be a direct death certificate to God, but that's how many people took it. Time explored this and the movement surrounding it and the cover alone caused such a massive uproar amongst religious conservatives, Time's mail room was inundated with angry letters to the editor and the magazine lost thousands of subscribers.

As late as the early '70s, it was still very rare to see African-Americans on the covers of major national magazines (and virtually never in a flattering light.) But Playboy declared black is beautiful with it's October 1971 issue featuring Darine Stern by herself on the cover. Angry white readers in the South were outraged, but Playboy made no apologies.

Stern's cover pose was reprised in 2009, but featuring Marge Simpson.

 
The murder of former Beatle John Lennon stunned the world in December of 1980. Not since the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had the world lost such a universally beloved icon and into January 1981, people were still recovering from the shock. Rolling Stone published this as the cover photo for their first issue of 1981. It was shot merely hours before Lennon's assassination. It wasn't intended to be offensive and would have made the cover regardless as Lennon had just released his Double Fantasy album. But a nude photo of any sort for a magazine sold on publicly accessible magazine racks at that time was too much - especially for a man that just died. And many stores banned this issue.