Alter-reviews 1) Hot Tuna Live X2 2) The Ramones Box Set 3) The Animals Box Set 4) Rock operas (sort of) by The Cowboy Junkies and a collaboration of Stephen King, John Mellencamp and T. Bone Burnett,

Hot Tuna came to town for their annual Thanksgiving concerts last weekend, this year with two new twists; they divided the shows into one acoustic and one electric, and, for the first time, they thew in some Jefferson Airplane songs. Both nights, morevoer, they were joined by musical ..great idea. In recent years, the extra guitarist has been G.E. Smith, and they had some incadescent moments. Campbell, however, plays more instruments and can sing a little bit and is married to someone who can really, really sing. The prettiness of her voice (face too, I might add) gave the band an entirely new dimension. I loved the version of “Sugaree” they did—something that would have been impossible, I think with just Jorma on vocals—and of course, “Somebody to Love” was a real treat—if over too soon. Jack and Jorma have not lost a step in the half-century or so of their fruitful association, but lately I’ve been concerned that nobody gives amazing versitile Barry Mitterhoff the props he deserves. Eric Diaz on drums deserves a mention too, but Mitterhoff is amazing and together with the Campbells, it’s an amazing ensemble. See them if you get the chance.

I’ve got two box sets I want to let you know about in times for Thanksgiving. The first is an appropriately minimalist Ramones six-cd box of their first six records, nothing more, nothing less. The last Ramones box set was just the opposite, with fancy packaging, a comic-book history and a ton of songs on each cd. I had it for years but I never listened to it. When I bought the Ramones first cd on my first day of work at “Record World” in August 1976, I thought it was a rip-off because it was only 28 minutes. Now I see that was part of their genius. This box is how they short be heard; in short, eplosive spurts—like an orgasm… or a punch in the face. It’s called Ramones: The Sire Years, and it’s got no extras and not even a booklet. Just six cds…

The Animals-The Mickie Most Years & More is a five CD set of the earliest years of the band during which time they charted eleven singles in this country in just two years, including "The House of the Rising Sun" "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," etc. Fifty years later, we’ve got their first four American albums—the first three produced by Mickie Most—The Animals, The Animals on Tour, Animal Tracks, and Animalization in their original mono versions, now newly remastered from the original tapes. And tons of bonus tracks, including their first release ever, the I Just Wanna Make Love to You EP that came out on the Graphic Sound label in 1963 (later reissued by Decca in 1965 as In the Beginning There Was Early Animals), four tracks previously unreleased in the U.S., three single versions (including "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and "It's My Life"), four alternate versions (three in stereo) of such tracks as "Talkin' 'Bout You" and "Don't Bring Me Down," and one U.K.-only track ("Roadrunner)." Packaging is okay. Today’s the release date. Be the first on your block. It ain’t cheap, though.

I also want to give a mention to a marvelously ambitous release by one of my favorite bands, The Cowboy Junkies. “The Kennedy Suite” is a rock opera, song cycle, post-modern musical that tells the story of the JFK assassination through the fragmented narratives of a series of characters, each of whom experiences the tragedy from their own intensely personal perspective. The recording is a collaboration that combines the original work of Toronto composer and lyricist Scott Garbe as arranged, recorded and produced by the Cowboys along with Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson of Skydiggers. It could have been a catastrophe but it’s not at all. The music holds up too. Margo Timmins has one my favorite voice on earth and this rewards repeated listenings.

And while we’re on this topic, I don’t know if I ever recommended the wonderful collaboration between Stephen King, John Mellencamp and T. Bone Burnett, T Bone Burnett for the Southern gothic supernatural musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, featuring performances by Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, Sheryl Crow, Neko Case, Taj Mahal, Ryan Bingham, Will Dailey and Kris Kristofferson, along with actors Matthew McConaughey, Samantha Mathis and Meg Ryan. It’s also a digital book, which is, of course, best read with the music on. Read all about it here. It’s a wonderful meeting of many minds.

Now here’s Reed:

Fox News: Now the Anti-Obamacare Propaganda Channel by Reed Richardson

The evolution hasn’t been overnight, but if you spend any time watching Fox News nowadays the endstate is unmistakable. When it comes to the network’s cable and online programming there are now but two overarching rules in place.

1) Take every opportunity to bash Obamacare.

2) When covering anything else, see Rule #1.

Anecdotal evidence of Fox News’s willingness to obsess over Obamacare to the detriment of other big news is aplenty, as I documented after sitting through six hours of Election Night coverage earlier this month. Ironically, the network’s fixation on the President’s healthcare reform law that night caused it to be late to the game in adopting the mainstream media’s McAulliffe-almost-lost-because-of-Obamacare meme. (Which was total bunk.)

But the most damning proof of this now singular devotion to all-Obamacare, all-the-time coverage comes in statistical form. A quick term search on FoxNews.com, for example, offers up a revealing pattern on the number of stories posted there for the past year/month/week/day:

Obamacare          1698  427    88      18

NSA                    716    92      12      1

Benghazi              792    60      7       1

IRS                      503    46      14      5

Budget deficit       467    18      2       0

As each of these much-touted-by-the-right-wing “scandals” have withered and died on the media vine without bearing fruit, the alleged horrors of Obamacare have been planted by Fox News to take their place. So much so that Fox’s Obamacare coverage now even eclipses cataclysmic worldwide tragedies like Typhoon Haiyan. Just how dramatically out of whack Fox’s news judgment is was quantified by Pew Research study last week. In tracking 20 hours of programming across five days in mid-November, Pew found Fox News devoted nearly eight hours—almost 40% of its entire newshole—to just one issue: Obamacare. As for covering the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters in decades, Fox News devoted just six minutes of airtime—the equivalent of two commercial breaks. (Even opinion-heavy MSNBC spent 41 minutes covering Haiyan, and just over three hours on Obamacare.)

To be sure, Obamacare is a big story and some critical media coverage of the botched Healthcare.gov rollout is certainly warranted, as are questions about the president’s “If you like your plan, you can keep” broken promise. But fair-minded accountability journalism is not what Roger Ailes is trying to achieve with his network’s rabid focus on Obamacare. It’s not the quantity of Fox News’s coverage that’s problematic; it’s the quality. Or should I say lack thereof. When taken as whole, Fox’s news products have clearly metastasized into a toxic media mass of one-sided hyperbole, willful misinformation, and outright anti-Obamacare propaganda.

Consider these “fair and balanced” headlines—some “news,” some opinion— from just the past few days:

“ObamaCare: A Doctor’s Nightmare”

“ObamaCare Slams Smokers with Sky-High Premium Costs”

“Unions Given ‘Special’ ObamaCare Deal”

“Obamcare Forcing People into Medicaid”

“How Should GOP Attack ObamaCare?”

“How ObamaCare Has Diminished the President”

“Dog Has Bone to Pick with ObamaCare”

Or my personal nominee in the could-have-run-on-Free-Republic category:

“Obamacare’s Arrogance, Corruption, and Abuse is Just Beginning”

But buried below the rampant bias evident in these headlines are even more misleading talking points. In the Medicaid story from above, for instance, the writer stokes fears of Obamacare by citing a flawed, oft-debunked study that suggests that Medicaid patients die twice as often as those with private insurance. (Here’s why that’s wrong.) And my favorite wingnut-special column from above throws everything but the socialized communal kitchen sink at the reader, whether it’s tired canards like “Chicago-style corruption” and “replac[ing] free markets” or actual falsehoods like Obamacare is ballooning healthcare costs (nope), and the law has ignited a wave of businesses hiring part-time workers (sorry).

In the past week, however, Fox News’s radically dishonest coverage has moved beyond to surreal to the absurd. Now so blinded by its outrage over the healthcare reform law, the network’s programming can no longer see anything else as but a reflection of Obamacare. Of course, the Iran nuclear deal was the big news over this past weekend, but even above and beyond the network’s standard bellicose blovation [a sample chyron: “Sucker’s Deal”], Fox News is there to remind viewers that it’s all just a transparent attempt at distraction.

There was half-term Gov. Sarah Palin on Fox News Sunday singing this same song to host Chris Wallace about Senator Harry Reid’s exercising of the “nuclear option.” But when, in the midst of his obsequiousness, Wallace actually pointed out to Palin that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare will give healthcare to 30-million uninsured Americans while the latest GOP plan would only cover three million, Palin’s misdirection-as-response was the very definition of tinfoil-hat chutzpah. First, she dismissed the CBO’s numbers as unreliable and then had the temerity to call it a “sad state of affairs” that “a normal American” such as herself has to be so cynical about government. And, for that matter, why hasn’t Obama ever proved that his FEMA re-education camps don’t exist? Probably because if he did, it’d all be part of grand scheme to…you guessed it…distract from Obamacare’s failures.

Sure, Fox’s lukewarm embrace of Obama conspiracies is nothing new. But still, it’s a wake-up call to our discourse when former President Bush spokesperson and U.S. foreign policy history buff Dana Perino prefaces a question about the timing of the Iran deal to conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer with the always responsible phrase: “I’m not the biggest conspiracy theorist, but…”

As you’ll no doubt be shocked, shocked to learn, Krauthammer agreed with her implied suggestion that this whole diplomatic initiative with Iran was little more than a panicked put-on by the White House. And who could argue with his logic, particularly since he does such a fine job of it himself: “They clearly were in a hurry, though they probably would have gotten here with or without the collapse of Obamacare, but it sure gave them an extra incentive to get in a hurry because they need any distraction, any distraction possible for a government in collapse.” So, not even credit given for being an efficient appeaser? Tough room.

OK, so what? Fox News long ago—like since its first day on the air—cast aside any pretensions about objectivity to promote its owner's and president’s political preferences. And Obama’s presence in the White House has only turned that latent animosity up to 11. But when a network so fully walls itself off from impartiality and honesty, it really does matter, particularly when one political party is so in thrall to their propaganda that it bases its dogma on it.

Case in point, only minutes after the nuclear deal with Iran was reached on Friday night, Republican Senator John Cornyn was Tweeting this: “Amazing what [White House] will do to distract from [Obama]care.” And as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted, Republicans—just like before the 2012 election and during the government shutdown last month—are again cocooning themselves inside a parallel universe where the Obama-is-doomed storylines on Fox are pre-destined to occur and unprecedented obstruction of the government is a winning strategy. In the long run, they’ll be sorely disappointed once again, but thanks to Fox News, our nation will have to suffer through Republicans making the same momentous mistakes once more.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com. 

I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

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