First, some important, not idiotic stuff that has nothing to do with "progressives" (sorry for the redundancy).
In memoriam P-Funk's "Starchild," Garry Shider. As Booman justly remarks:
I don't know if you noticed but Starchild died of lung cancer last Wednesday, leaving us without the premier funk guitarist in the world. ... That's far too young.
But Booman leaves out a couple of things:
1. This tidbit from the obituary in the Times:
Benefit concerts to help pay Mr. Shider’s medical bills have been scheduled for July 10 in Plainfield and July 11 in Manhattan.
Of course, under a single payer system, that concert would be about joy for Shider's life, and the joy he brought to others with music. And not paying off the health insurance parasites.
2. This website, for the Garry Shider Medical fund:
We are reaching out world wide, asking Garry’s friends, family, loyal fans, and music industry constituents to make a donation to The Garry Shider Medical Fund in an effort to defray the medical expenses that are already starting to add up. Because Garry will be undergoing a series of radiation treatments and will need various medications and aftercare, he will not be able to tour
Single payer, of course, would solve this too.
Maybe if career "progressives" had worked to move the Overton Window
left, so that single payer was part of the discourse, thousands of people would not have been condemned to die "too young" (before, and after, 2014). Great artists and the obscure alike.
* * *
It's utterly typical of our career "progressives" to burnish their cred and weep crocodile tears over the death of a black man, while silencing and shunning those who advocate a policy -- single payer -- that might have saved his life, and the lives of many others. Well done, all.
NOTE But what would I know? I'm a racist! I know, because the OFB told me so!
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- 1+[CSE]+#b94+
Front page
Comments
I remember a song we used to sing in Sunday School....
I think Lambert has just changed the words for me forever.
"I'm a racist, yes I know....
told me so."
'Cause the OFB
(Sung to the tune of "Jesus Loves Me").
What happened to Garry Shider happens
way too frequently, and to too many people, and the tragedy is, of course, that a golden opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people was not just blown, it was trashed in favor of improving the bottom lines of corporations and pleasing Wall Street.
It is always sad when a great talent is lost, but every life lost, because of lack of care, or lack of money to pay for it, represents a tragedy to those left to pick up the pieces. Shider’s music touched a lot of people, but who can put a price on the loss of a mother’s smile, a father’s gentle hand, a sister’s compassion, a child’s promise?
Well, we know the answer to that, don’t we? The same people who are working overtime to preserve tax breaks and giveaways for the rich, who can endlessly fund wars and the war machine, and predictably look to those who have the least to help pay for it, rationalizing that maybe this will be an incentive for the unemployed to put down the frosty iced tea and climb out of the hammock and go get a job – any job – and stop enjoying their government-paid life of leisure.
These people have no clue, and no interest in getting one; the cavalier attitude, the cold indifference to the real suffering that is happening – I don’t know, this may be one long, hot and angry summer.
swing down sweet chariot...
Glenn's gone, Eddie's gone and now Gary.
I'm gonna let Glenn's amazing voice send him off:
And it isn't all sad, nothin but funkin around in the afterlife:
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask anything of them” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn