Tag Archives: Randy Newman

Unpacking the Aunty Em Erican Blog At Six Months

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My All Time Top Ten. Click to enlarge.

Light the candles and break out the noise-makers!!! The Aunty Em Ericann Blog celebrates Six Months of Existence this week. And to think it all started with Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person on April 19, 2012.

It’s been a wild six months for both my readers and myself. In that time I have written 180 posts and published tens of thousands of words. I’ve made new friends and, just as importantly, made several new enemies. However, what have I learned in that time? Among other things, I’ve learned that posts on Brian Jones are hugely popular. My highest-rated post is the July 3, 2012 post on Brian Jones. As of this writing it has had 1991 hits, which is more than twice as many as my 2nd highest-rated post on Josephine Baker, while exactly a month older has only 863 hits. That’s also more than 3 times my Number Three most popular post detailing my HIGH-LARRY-US bun fight with the Fox “News” correspondent James Rosen, which has only 619 hits.

James Rosen, self-proclaimed Beatles
expert and historical revisionist

For the longest time the Rosen post was my most popular. It was sad to see it slide to Number Three because it was my first post about Fox “News” (aside from all my writing at NewsHounds). Its popularity gave me the impetus to launch several wildly popular series on my blog, including The Fox News Spin Cycle and Chow Mein and Bolling. Just this week I spun off a new series called Judge Not, exploring the Libertarian mind (such as it is) of Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Fox “News” Senior Judicial Analyst.

The Number Four Post in my All Time Top Ten is a sleeper that crept up on me. It also happens to be about Fox News. I was shocked when the so-called “news” channel (in the guise of Bill “Loofah Lad” O’Reilly) felt the need to attack Randy Newman for his “I’m Dreaming” song. Since being published on September 22, 2012 it’s already wracked up 471 hits in just a month, which might make it my fastest growing post in popularity. It will be interesting to see how it does over the long haul.

The E.W.F. Stirrup House

My Number Five All Time Post is the one that I wish was really my Number One, because it’s an issue near and dear to my heart. If you’ve not been following my Unpacking Coconut Grove series, please take a look. I am trying to save the historic 120-year old E.W.F. Stirrup House from Demolition by Neglect. A 120-year old house doesn’t sound like much, but compared to everything else in Florida, that’s ancient. The house is not only architecturally important, but culturally important as well. It marks the zenith of the Bahamian community in Coconut Grove which helped build and serve the rest of the community. It was built by one of Florida’s first Black millionaires who . . . Well, please go read it for yourself. Suffice to say that E.W.F. Stirrup was a man way ahead of his time. His important legacy will be lost when his house no longer stands.

However, as much as I am interested in looking back, I am just as interested in the current Top Ten Posts of the Week. Here’s how that breaks down.

I want to thank all my readers who drop in to read what I have to say. While you’re at my blog, please take the time to click on one of the adverts. It will cost you nothing, but it adds a few (and I do mean few) pennies to my account and helps support the time and energy it takes to maintain the Aunty Em Ericann Blog. Thanking you in advance.

Fox “News” Attacks Randy Newman For A Song

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There’s a simple way to measure whether some criticism “out there in reality land” has hit its mark. That’s when Fox “News” spends any amount of air time trying to knock it down. Recently Randy Newman released a song which is a scathing attack on White racists who are hating on President Obama. Take a listen:

Newman explained the song in an interview with Slate:

Slate: You’ve said that one thing that inspired you to write this song is the thought that, “there are a lot of people who don’t want a black person in the White House and they want him out.” To put it bluntly, how do you know?

Newman: Well, I don’t know, partly because no one, and I mean no one, would admit feeling that way. Still, it’s clear that there are lots of people out there who are uncomfortable. The Civil War was a long time ago but there are aspects of it that remain unsettled, I think. Early on in Obama’s term, there was heat generated by issues that you wouldn’t think would cause such passion. Even the term “Obamacare,” the way it’s spit out, like he was some kind of witch doctor. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to the issue, but I don’t think so. There’s an edge to things that normally wouldn’t have an edge. I thought it was a little extra.

However, Newman’s song clearly irked Bill “Loofah Lad” O’Reilly. So, who does he turn to in order to denigrate Newman? None other than Bernard McGuirk and Greg “Short People” Gutfeld, both of whom have been known to make stupid and incendiary statements without any prodding from The Falafel King. Watch how funny these Three Stooges think they are:

This is not the first time Randy Newman has delved into the issue of race for a song. Long before he became well-known for his tunes for Disney movies he recorded “Sail Away,” a song that posits what the first slave traders might have said to those who they dragged to ‘Merka in chains. It managed to go under the radar.

A song that didn’t manage to go under the radar was Rednecks, which caused quite a stir when it was released. No one accused Randy Newman of being the song’s narrator, like Bill “Falafel King” O’Reilly’s guests accused Randy Newman of being racist himself.

Randy Newman has written many songs about politics that are not strictly about race either. To my mind his best has always been “Political Science,” which was described in the Slate interview as “a pinhead’s view of China.”

Bottom line: In a few songs of a couple of minutes each, Randy Newman makes far more sense than an entire year’s worth of Bill O’Reilly or Greg Gutfeld combined.

h/t  NewsHounds

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