The famous Soul Train host died on Wednesday, leading to many topical Facebook posts and shared video clips. I remember the show well from childhood – it followed Saturday morning cartoons and was also popular on Sunday evenings – but it is hardly an integral part of my life or memories. It has been a good 25 years since I watched or thought about it. But this clip, of the much-loved "line dance" portion of the show, caught my eye:

A lot of things have changed in 30-plus years, obviously, but it is striking how much different these people look than the ones we see on TV today (or would see if Soul Train was still on the air). They look like real people. No fake hair, fake boobs, fake nails, fake collagen-pumped lips, fake eyelashes, or fake smiles. The women don't look like porn stars and the men don't look like steroid addled He-Men with abs like cheese graters and zeppelin arms. They're all dressed loudly but quite differently. And they look like they're having actual fun rather than wearing fake, practiced personalities for the camera.

Nothing's easier than idealizing the past – usually unjustifiably – so I'm trying to tread lightly here. It's just surprising to me in a way that has probably already occurred to older readers to see how the idealized image of cool people listening to cool music has become so overwhelmingly fake and detached from reality in a relatively short period of time. Would any of these women make it on an MTV-type program today without a boob job and/or lipo? Would any of those guys be trying to make it in Hollywood today without hitting the gym until they looked like UFC fighters? And we wonder why kids transition to adulthood with such horribly distorted self images these days. I'm sure the pressure to be thin and pretty has been around forever, but it would be nice if Hollywood suggested that you could look like an actual human being and still be cool.

That's what I thought. No one ever picks A.

As a preface, please consult Lea Goldman's outstanding, well-researched article "The Big Business of Breast Cancer", which represents what may be the one and only outgoing link to Marie Claire magazine I will ever offer. It details the proliferation of scams in the charity industry (a fitting, if oxymoronic, term) that has sprouted up around breast cancer. There are many organizations that use the funds they raise primarily to raise more funds and pay handsome salaries to the administrators and their talentless family members. It is a long read but well worth it. Note well the point that breast cancer research is hardly suffering for lack of funds. The author conservatively estimates six billion dollars funneled toward research annually with almost no progress made since the 1970s.

Second, just in case you missed what all of the fuss is about, the Susan G. Komen Foundation^tm For the Cure^tm announced on Wednesday that it will no longer be making grants/contributions to Planned Parenthood for early breast cancer screenings for the poor and/or uninsured. Nothing says "We're committed to stamping out breast cancer by encouraging regular, early mammograms" like eliminating funding for mammograms.

OK.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation^tm has been on my personal shitlist for many years (this post is from 2008). If this is what it takes to get you on the heretofore lonely Screw Komen bandwagon, so be it. But you should not have a low opinion of Komen^tm because of their announcement on Wednesday. You should have a low opinion of them because they're a fake charity run like any other company with a product to sell. In this case the product is a combination of guilt, pity, and hope dissolved in a weak acid and dyed a nauseating pink.

Wednesday's decision has been described as motivated by pressure from pro-life groups, but in reality Komen^tm is (and always has been) run by right wingers and closely aligned with conservative politics. The organization's current president, Karen Handel, ran for governor of Georgia in 2010 and lost in the Republican primary. Sarah Palin endorsed her. During her campaign she promised repeatedly to defund Planned Parenthood. She took over Komen^tm a few months ago. You do the math. On a personal note, Karen, I hope you get cancer. I hope the doctors find it too late to do anything but treat your pain, and I hope they do a poor job of that. Cut and paste that at your leisure to prove how mean-spirited and Uncivil liberals are.

Komen's founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker, is a big money Republican with ties to the past three Republican administration who received a political appointment from George W. Bush as a reward for her fundraising largesse. She draws a salary of $459,000 annually, money well spent compared to the 39% of its budget the foundation spends on "public health education" (i.e., marketing itself). Not to mention that they also spend a million bucks per year in legal fees to threaten other non-profit groups who use the phrase For the Cure^tm, to which Komen^tm claims to have intellectual property rights.

That last part is important to the organization, of course, because every successful marketing campaign needs a good logo and a slogan. And that's all Komen is – a consulting firm that helps large corporate clients sell more of their products through pinkwashing campaigns. By slathering everything from pasta to baseball bats to perfume to fast food with the Pink Imprimatur, consumers are led to believe that their purchases are making meaningful contributions to breast cancer research. Somewhere down the line a few cents per purchase may trickle into those bloated coffers, but the immediate and motivating effect of that pink packaging is to get you to buy things. In short, Komen^tm is a group of salespeople selling image. Whatever money benefits the sick, researchers, or recovering patients is ancillary. Getting those big, fat tax-exempt checks from their Partners for the Cure^tm is what drives their business model.

Am I too cynical? Consider their lack of discretion in choosing Partners^tm. Nothing says "We're serious about stomping out cancer!" like a pink bucket of fried chicken or pink bags of deep fried snacks. It's ridiculous on that "Earth Day brought to you by Ford" level.

There is a special circle of hell devoted to people who conceal their own selfish behavior with the appearance of charity and good deeds. I suppose that people who make so much money on the suffering of others need some way to look their spa-treated faces in the mirror every morning, but the rest of us need not be deceived. I have never purchased a Komen^tm-labeled product and I hope you will make a similar arrangement with your conscience today. Playing politics with people's lives is low, even by the withered standards of morality in the corporate world. The 60% of women whose breast cancer is detected before it metastasizes survive almost without exception. The 40% of women whose cancer is detected after metastasis almost inevitably die within five years.

Regardless of whether they cave to public pressure and reverse this decision, I would love to see the Susan G. Komen Foundation^tm and its self-aggrandizing, silly publicity stunts reduced to ground zero. I want corporate sponsors to feel like they'd rather put a swastika on their packaging than another Komen^tm logo for fear of a public backlash. And I want to prove that charitable giving is not wedded to the act of shopping. And since I'm so much better at pointing out what's wrong with everything than at offering solutions, here's what you should do if you want to help the fight against breast cancer:

1. Donate directly. Call or visit the Sloan-Kettering or Johns Hopkins/Avon cancer research institutes and ask how to make a donation that will go 100% toward research. Or donate to the American Cancer Society, which contributes less to research but does a lot of quality-of-life things like buying wigs or prosthesis for cancer victims. Donate locally to a hospital or hospice in your area that will use your money directly on patient services rather than commercials and administrative salaries.

2. Donate your time. One afternoon helping Chemo patients by cleaning their home or running their errands is worth more than all the yogurt lids in existence.

3. Say no to fake activism and Cause Marketing.

4. Remember that people die from things other than breast cancer. Cervical and ovarian cancer are overlooked. Men needlessly die from the reluctance to get regular prostate exams. AIDS is still a thing. Heart disease is the #1 killer of men and women. Depression is a leading cause of death among young people.

5. Share this with as many uninformed people as possible. On Facebook, via email, or whatever. Show them Lea Goldman's article. Explain patiently why Planned Parenthood is used as a pinata by every floundering right wing political figure to score cheap points and get the rubes whipped into a frenzy. If you encounter said rubes directly, insult them. Suggest that his or her parents were related prior to marriage.

Not being a practitioner of any organized religion, I understand the factionalism and various interdenominational rivalries adequately but not completely. I get it that evangelical Christians (let's safely assume they made up the vast majority of religiously inclined South Carolina GOP primary voters) have extremely negative views of Mormonism. It was clear that this would be an issue with his candidacy from the outset, but I never really processed it or attempted to understand it.

All religion is based on faith, and specifically the belief in miraculous events. Don't flip out here. What I mean is, Christians believe that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead. As people cannot rise from the dead (or, in the case of lucky Lazarus, be risen) one can only base a belief that such things occurred on considerable faith in a higher power. I'm not making fun of anyone. This is simply the reality of believing in something that can't be empirically validated. As such every religion, logically speaking, is equally plausible. The only reason Mormonism gets more crap is because the miraculous events upon which it is based occurred more recently and thus are treated with a greater degree of skepticism. Mohammed and the Buddha and Jesus and the gang were lucky to exist before photography, the telegram, and newspapers. Not so for ol' Joseph Smith.

My point here is that while the core beliefs of Mormonism may appear silly to the non-religious or merely the non-Mormon, they're no sillier (or less plausible) than the stories of the Old Testament or the Bhagavad Gita. It all requires the willing suspension of the laws of physical reality and a belief in a supernatural power. Fine. So why do born-again Christians have such fanatical hostility toward Mormonism? While Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, and other major religious groups in the U.S. may not be Bestest Buddies with the LDS church, they seem to be tolerant and not openly hostile.

Recently it hit me that the issue is not based in religious dogma (Mormons do not, as Evangelicals often claim, reject the divinity of Jesus) or in codes of conduct (Mormons reject most of the same behaviors rejected by Christians, including polygamy, gay marriage, and other hot-button political issues). It's about competition. The megachurch dwellers hate Mormons because Mormonsism is a proselytizing religion, one that has been phenomenally successful in the past few decades. When George Romney ran for president or governor in the 1950s and 1960s nobody cared that he was a Mormon because Mormons were as common as Zoroastrians. Now there are over 14 million Mormons and LDS missionaries (Sound familiar?) in 167 countries according to the church.

In competing for the same customer, if you will, Mormons have the distinct advantage of being almost absurdly friendly and outwardly tolerant of other belief systems, whereas the average ultraconservative Christian Bible-banger has a mouth like a puckered asshole and uses Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards as a blueprint for spreading the word. Mormonism has slick ad campaigns (they have billboards all over Atlanta, commercials on every TV network, and a sponsored YouTube channel that pops up at least once daily for yours truly) and they distance themselves from the anti-intellectualism of the Christian right. It's the kind of thing that middle class people – particularly Hispanics – appear to find appealing, based on the number of new recruits. And like other parts of the Republican base, the Christian right is terrified at the prospect of losing the Hispanics as a potential recruiting pool.

This isn't Ed's Ringing Endorsement of Mormonism. To me it is no better or worse than any other religion. The point is that the Pat Robertson crowd is scared shitless of the success and polished appeal of the LDS church, not any particular aspect of its dogma. Since so many religions differ wildly from evangelical Protestantism, I can't think of a more plausible explanation for why Mormonism is singled out for such intense hatred. Why not Gingrich's Catholicism, with its blasphemous Roman popery? Why not Judaism? Why not Islam? Oh wait, I guess they do hate that last one. Different reason, though.

I am not the world's most open minded person. I detest Scientologists, Juggalos, and the Irish. OK, just the first two. But my reasons are rooted in their beliefs and practices. I'm becoming convinced that the anti-Mormon sentiment on the right is based on something entirely different. Megachurches are in constant competition with each other and with other religions to put more butts in seats. And they're getting very worried that this new kid on the block, Mormonism, is to Evangelical Christianity what digital photography was to Kodak film.

“The police state in this country is growing out of control,” Ron Paul’s campaign said. “One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities. The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.”

Wow, what a compelling controversy.

The TSA is of course a signature issue for the paranoid Liberty-loving Pauls, and the bedraggled agency has become a lighting rod for criticism from conservatives of all stripes in the past few years – surely you recall the enthralling "Don't touch my junk!" brouhaha from 2010. It's the kind of don't-you-dare-inconvenience-me hissy fit that stands in for a serious discussion of political issues in this country. The rich irony, of course, is that the TSA is direct creation of the right-wing histrionics that followed 9/11. On the one hand they demand the illusion of security provided by wars, technology, and lots of people in badges performing searches (badges being the Authoritarian-Follower personality type's version of a favorite blankie). On the other…you know, privacy and The Constitution and I'm a Very Important Person who doesn't have time for long lines at the airport.

These apparently contradictory urges actually make sense as long as we recognize that right wing suburban America does want more airport security, just not for themselves. Why is the TSA inconveniencing all of us with searches? Why don't they just pull the brown people out of the line and search them since we all know who the real terrorists are anyway? People like Rand Paul want a TSA that accomplishes the primary task of government as people like him see it: making white people and people with money (to the extent that the two groups do not overlap in his mind) feel safer. It's the best of all worlds, an America in which the the people with badges keep their eyes on the colored folks while good God-fearing patriots like Us are left to enjoy our freedom.

I can't read Rand Paul's mind, but let's say there is smoke suggesting fire on this issue. You may recall his statements against the Civil Rights Act during the 2010 campaign, or perhaps Ron Paul's various statements suggesting some problems with race issues (note that his "plausible deniability" argument regarding his newsletter evaporated last week thanks to some good investigative journalism). Maybe the Pauls are true Libertarians, or maybe they have some racist tendencies, or maybe they're just garden variety modern conservatives who demand total freedom and total security simultaneously – for themselves, of course. Everyone else is fair game.

1. Graphic artist Mike Joyce has put together a gallery of dozens of old rock & punk show flyers re-done in the International Modernist style. It works eerily well for reasons I can't pinpoint.

As an added bonus, maybe some of you old bastards actually went to one of these shows.

2. For the comic book nerd dwelling deep inside of you (or perhaps right on the surface) here is Marko Manev's gallery of "minimalist designs" for superheroes.

Something tells me that if they actually existed and needed to advertise, this is how they'd do it.

3. Photographer and artist Lilly McElroy has a series entitled "I Throw Myself At Men" wherein she would find men through Craigslist, meet them in some public place, and proceed to literally throw herself at them (while what I assume is a colleague of hers took photos in mid-throw). The reactions of her unsuspecting (victims? dates?) are priceless.

4. You've probably seen this one already; NASA released a 21st Century version of its famous Apollo 17 "Blue Marble" photo courtesy the Suomi (Finland?) satellite. The original resolution (8000 x 8000!) makes it the most detailed picture of the entire planet ever taken. That's stretching the truth, though, since this is actually a composite image that, as is the case with so much photography of natural phenomena, is probably "enhanced" and Photoshopped in a dozen different ways. Still, this is pretty amazing. Zoom in on a few different spots to get the full effect. The amazing level of detail reminds me of my favorite Earth-from-above photo, of Sicily's Mt. Etna volcano erupting in 1999.

All that said, if you're gonna drive it's obviously better to have a vehicle that uses less rather than more. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids, even though they are technological stopgaps at best, make sense. Last year Chevy (part of "Government Motors", as our rapier-witted colleagues on the right call it, especially those ignorant of the fact that the first bailout payments came from George W. Bush in an effort to push the automakers' bankruptcy into the Obama administration) released the first plug-in, range-extended vehicle, the Volt. It's expensive because the technology is new, but for those willing to take the plunge it offers the ability to travel about fifty miles on electricity and then engage a small gasoline engine to recharge the batteries. The end result, accounting for the power that it draws from your home, is a vehicle that gets the equivalent of 93 mpg. That's pretty impressive.

So we have an American-designed vehicle, built in Detroit and its suburbs, that represents a substantial leap forward in technology. And it's probably going to be a flop because Republicans are desperate to see anything related to GM fail. Because they love America so much, they want to kneecap the company and its products in an effort to score cheap political points against Obama to the presumed delight of their legion of mouthbreaters.

Last year a Volt's battery pack caught fire after a crash test. And by "after a crash test" I mean three full weeks after the vehicle was totaled in a side-impact crash. Just so we're all clear: the thing didn't burst into flames on impact (as cars full of flammable liquid sometimes do, of course). It was crashed, left outside in a parking lot for three weeks, and then developed a fire in its smashed battery pack. Non-story.

But the House GOP, led by Darrell Issa – yes, the only convicted felon currently serving in your Congress – have decided that they can accuse the administration of conspiring to conceal this incident, supposedly to protect their cronies at GM (who, for the sake of their argument, let's pretend actually exist). Their theory is apparently that the NHTSA failed to disclose the fire "quickly enough"…what exactly that means is neither clear nor, for Republicans, relevant. In the process they have publicized the hell out of this crash test incident, culminating with televised hearings before a House committee today. There a GM higher-up patiently explained to Inmate Issa that the battery fire could only be reproduced in testing by impaling the battery pack with a steel rod and waiting several weeks for the fire to start, leading to this revealing exchange:

GM's Akerson stood up for the Volt, saying that the fire that's caused so much commotion only happened "after putting the battery through lab conditions that no driver would experience in the real world," according to his prepared remarks. Strickland said NHTSA "pulled no punches" in the Volt fire investigation – which recently ended after finding the Volt to be a safe car – but Issa was having none of it. He told Strickland: "I hear you, I don't believe you."

In other words, "The facts don't align with my talking points, so you must be lying. Also, Obama bad."

The end result of all of this, if today's flurry of news items about the hearings is any indication, is that the buying public will probably associate this model with fires. Every headline contains some combination of the words "Chevy Volt" and "fire", and products that develop reputations for being unsafe, whether or not it is warranted, tend to have a hard time shaking it. Like everyone over the age of thirty automatically associates "Ford Pinto" with "exploding gas tank", our Country First^tm GOP wants to make sure that Americans think of Chevy Volts as giant bombs that will, like, electrocute your kids and then set their corpses ablaze.

It's pointless, it's counterproductive, it's selfish, and it's a great example of how scorched Earth tactics are the sum total of what the modern GOP is capable of doing. The party that exists solely to suck up to corporate interests is proving that it will even throw those under the bus if they happen to be between it and more power.

2. To quote Chief Wiggum, "Maybe lay off the Asians, Lou." He got quite a bit of mileage out of bashing China, no? I half expected him to bring kindly old Mr. Wong who owns the dry cleaners around the corner onto the podium so the assembled legislators could pelt him with tomatoes.

3. "OK, pan to Camera 2. Now back to Camera 1. Good. Let's switch to a wide shot of the presidential box in a few seconds….OH CRAP, HE MENTIONED ISRAEL! QUICK! LOCATE AND ZOOM IN ON A JEW! HURRY, BEFORE THE MOMENT IS GONE!"

4. I have no idea what speech Mitch Daniels or Ari Fleischer (who was bellyaching on CNN immediately afterward) watched, but it sounds like it was full of crazy ideas and un-American rhetoric.

5. Mitch McConnell might just be the worst person on Earth, and that's saying something on a planet inhabited by Newt Gingrich and the people who created True Blood.

While these events don't lend themselves to deep analysis, two pieces of commentary regarding where the primaries go from here stood out. Common wisdom dictates that Gingrich and Santorum have had their 30 seconds in the limelight and now the upper hand will return to the candidate with the most money and people on the ground (Mittens). Joe Scarborough, who in fairness has rarely seen a hole in the ground that he could correctly distinguish from his own ass, disagrees. He believes that Romney is in real trouble:

"There’s no doubt about it," Scarborough agreed (ed: with Chuck Todd of Meet the Press). "The party base is revolting, but they are revolting against the Washington Republican establishment anointing Mitt Romney. Just like Herman Cain was not about Herman Cain. It was a rejection of Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, a rejection of Mitt Romney. Michele Bachmann, a rejection of Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich wave one, a rejection of Mitt Romney. Now we have Newt Gingrich wave two, a rejection of Mitt Romney."

Hmm. Well the GOP base certainly is revolting, Joe! Oh, wait. You meant that as a verb. Fair enough. I'm not sure I buy his premise – after all, this is the kind of OMG THIS IS HUGE SO IMPORTANT!!! analysis that the networks trot out in the wake of every raindrop during election season. For a moment, let's suppose he's right. Why would that lead anyone to Newt Gingrich? Former House Republican Scarborough:

Mitt Romney could attack Newt for not being a conservative because Newt is not a conservative. Google it! We [Republicans] ran him out of Congress in 1998 because he sold us out on taxes, he sold us out on spending, he went to the floor and he sided with Democrats on his last speech, calling us the perfectionists caucus. He called us jihadists. He’s not a conservative, he’s an opportunist. But here is the problem: So is Mitt Romney.

Hmm. So it's the smarmy, polished opportunist versus the corpulent, hissing bridge troll opportunist. That seems like a pretty easy choice, right? I mean, you pick the one who can get elected, provided we can all agree that Ron Paul and Rick Santorum fail to reach the threshold of viable, Serious candidates.

Steve Schmidt (a relatively sane strategist responsible for the McCain campaign and now counted alongside Frum and Andy Sullivan as a heretic) reads from the Book of Revelations regarding Gingrich:

Look, I think, not only are we not moving towards a coalescing of support by the Republican establishment for Newt Gingrich, we're probably moving toward the declaration of war on Newt Gingrich by the Republican establishment. And if Newt Gingrich is able to win the Florida primary, you will see a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language.

People will go crazy and you will have this five week period until the Super Tuesday states which is going to be as unpredictable, tumultuous as any period in modern American politics. It will be a remarkable thing to watch should that happen in Florida.

HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDS AWESOME! I am suddenly very excited for Team Gingrich to win the Florida primary.

As entertaining as this idea might be, it doesn't make a ton of sense. If Gingrich and Romney are both rank opportunists, what difference does it make to the GOP establishment? They're certainly not up in arms over Gingrich's "subtle racist appeals." That's part of the lingua franca of today's GOP. No, the issue boils down to a simple but important difference in personalities.

Newt Gingrich has high name recognition and staggeringly high negatives – sort of like Hillary Clinton in 2008, but much more despised. He is so repugnant as a person that he could actually accomplish the unlikely feat of dragging the entire party down with him in the general election. This is a guy who was run out of town on a rail in 1998 by his own party, and who in the interim seems to have devoted himself to getting meaner and eating pie thrice daily. The Establishment realizes that its field is crap this year and the chances of beating even a weakened Obama are 50-50 at their absolute best. Their odds of holding on to the House and taking the Senate, however, are good. Provided some venom-spewing Rancor beast doesn't come along and alienate every half-witted voter to the left of Joe McCarthy. The empty vessel with the polished smile and lots of money is a much better face to put forward in an election such as this one. It's plausible that Romney could win. It's plausible that if he falls short, he won't leave a smoldering pile of wreckage that was the Republican Party in his wake. Gingrich, on the other hand, would not only make his own kamikaze run at the White House but also bring the rest of the party with him against his will.

I'd be thrilled to see Schmidt's scenario play out – a Gingrich win in Florida followed by GOP: Beyond Thunderdome – if part of me wasn't terrified that enough of the American public is dumb enough to vote for Gingrich in the general election. Given his level of charisma, I think I'm willing to risk that.

1. I just finished my taxes. My effective federal tax rate, due to some divorce-related shenanigans, reached a personal all-time high: 9%. I usually clock in between 5 and 7 percent. I earn about 80% of the U.S. median income for an individual male taxpayer, and at 33 I've never hit 10% with my effective tax rate. Mitt Romney, the multimillionaire, has revealed an effective tax rate of about 15% (comparable, as the folks at Fox are all too eager to point out, to multimillionaire John Kerry's 13%). Remind me again where all of this tax rage comes from? I do not speak from experience, but I find it hard to believe that everyone who makes an amount of money between Romney (Assloads) and Ed (Dick) is paying 30%-plus in effective taxes. Yeah, yeah, Social Security and Medicare too – which are a great deal if you're a high earner (since they're capped) and for the rest of us they pay out far more than we will ever pay in. Property taxes? Kindly blow it out your ass; nobody forced you to buy a house, and owning a home entitles you to about 1000 different writeoffs and loophole deductions. I wonder how many of these 15% Flat Tax advocates realize that most Americans are paying that share or less already. The actual numbers in the tax code are irrelevant.

2. The Republicans in favor of Voter ID laws have finally found a clear-cut case of widespread fraud on which to hang their rhetoric: it appears that 953 dead people managed to vote in the South Carolina GOP Primary.

3. The best of the Gingrich jokes so far:

- Maybe America should say it has cancer so Gingrich will leave it.
- If Republicans are so uncomfortable with Mormonism, why did they vote for the guy with three wives?
- Every time he seems like he's down Gingrich rises up again, which is fitting for a man who appears to be made of dough.