Opinion
While adapting to retirement and finding conditions in the University District more intolerable than at any time in 18 years of homeownership in a historic district abandoned by its city and its adjacent mega-university, during the past 15 months I have become a student of Columbus and a democratic activist. In developer-dominated Columbus, the University District has been sold and bought with the unhesitant approval of the legal and public guardians. In the process, I am known as a “civic leader” in City Hall, I am told, and also told “your name is mud” in Ohio State University’s Bricker Hall administration building. I began writing my regular “Busting Myths” column for the Columbus Free Press. At the same time, I am banned from the Opinion page of the Columbus Dispatch for calling it “muddled and uninformed” on its readers’ comments website. I have the ears and eyes of some in Columbus city government and the media as well as across the community. I have made more new friends and acquaintances than enemies—so far.
The Doo Dah Parade returns to Columbus Short North Art District, celebrating free speech and liberty with a satirical twist on Monday, July 4th.
The parade begins at 1 p.m. and will wind through Victorian Village and High Street, wrapping up with a live party and music at Goodale Park from 11 am – 7 pm.
The 39th Annual Doo Dah Parade’s Less-Than-Grand Marshal is 10TV’s Wake Up CBUS Anchor Angela An!
Remember, there’s no entry fee. You just show up!
For more incorrect info: www.DooDahParade.com
Hawaiian Soul was screened on the opening day of the 38th annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, which provides a launching pad for Indigenous Pacific Islander productions in Hollywood. Shorts, documentaries, animation and features by and about the Native peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, as well as by Asian and Asian-American filmmakers, are being screened at various venues in the world’s movie capital by this filmfest that spotlights South Seas Cinema, taking place May 5-13.
Since 1983 Visual Communications, a nonprofit organization, has presented LAAPFF, dedicated “to develop and support the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists who empower communities and challenge perspectives.” The L.A. presentation of the outstanding Hawaiian Soul is a perfect onscreen expression of this mission statement by LAAPFF, which provides a perch for works by and about Oceanic talents and topics in Los Angeles. The below is the first in a series of reviews of selections from this year’s Pacific Islander works at LAAPFF.
HAWAIIAN SOUL: ACTIVIST/MUSICIAN GEORGE HELM AND HELMER ʻĀINA PAIKAI
If you look at the steroid epidemic that has plagued the United States and the rest of the world for over 40 years, it is easy to see it was caused by what has been a bipartisan failure since the days Arnold Schwarzenegger opened the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio in 1989.
It began as just a bodybuilding contest back then but has expanded to become the largest public event in Columbus every year.
Many of the events at “The Arnold” are made up of youth competitions, but his core events cater to what I call “Steroid Nation.”
Strongman, bodybuilding and most powerlifting competitions at “the Arnold” have no credible testing for steroids. These freak show events dominate his advertising.
“The Arnold” steroid events have qualifiers in virtually every state in America. These local competitions are run by federations loosely aligned with “The Arnold.” I have seen myself that these events are where many young athletes are introduced to the “Dark Side” of steroid use.
Since 1898, when a Thomas Edison camera crew on location in Honolulu shot the first footage ever filmed in the Pacific Islands, the South Seas Cinema movie genre has been dominated by Haole (Caucasians) male filmmakers lensing productions primarily for the consumption of Haole audiences in order to make money. These motion pictures include Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane, written and directed by, and usually starring, Haoles. This phenomenon – call it “Haole-wood” – is examined in books such as Hawaiian film historian Matt Locey’s White Lens on Brown Skin, dropping this summer (see: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/white-lens-on-brown-skin/).
Doors open at 5:30pm. Performances begin at 6pm and include:
Wednesday, May 11 - Bobby Floyd Trio
2020 Grammy Award nominee Bobby Floyd performs on his classic Hammond B3 organ with Derek DiCenzo on guitar and bass and Reggie Jackson on drums, creating the perfect mix to provide an unparalleled evening of live jazz.
Wednesday, June 15 - Mark Hampton Quartet
Reemerging at the top of his game, jazz bassist Mark Hampton’s grooves are organically earthy, telling a story and giving jazz a conscience.
Wednesday, July 13 – Robert Mason Trio
Jazz educator and musician Robert Mason performs with his personal trio, featuring a blend of jazz and soulful sounds that mindfully infuse traditional and modern elements of jazz.
Wednesday, August 10 - Midwest Modern Jazz Quartet
Given the rhetorical prominence that right-wing Ohio Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and House districts gave to the 45th president's erroneously titled "America First" agenda--not program or policy--in their election campaigns, it's time to revisit the absence of an actual platform and the "Agenda's" consequences.
J.D., or J.P aka J.D. Mandel according to 45, Vance should be asked by all, especially our media, to explain and justify the true content, contradictions, and failed results of "America First," which played out often as "America Last."
Here is my column “America First: An Excavation of Trumpism and the Trump Agenda,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 24, 2021 which was shared across the U.S.:
Surveying the terrain and scratching the surface
When we doubt that swift and dramatic change is possible, what we really mean is that we haven’t seen much swift and dramatic change for the better lately. There’s actually no disputing that massive and almost instant change is perfectly possible. For example, in a matter of days, the unified voices of virtually every television network, newspaper, news website, and entertainment outlet in the United States took millions of people without a thought about foreign policy in their heads or any idea even where on the Earth Ukraine is located, and gave them all passionate opinions about Ukraine right at the very top of their awareness — the first thing they would mention, bumping the weather down to second place in the rankings as a topic for random conversations. You may think that was a very good thing — in fact, I can almost guarantee that you do. That’s sort of the point. But you can’t deny that it was fast or significant.
V.I. Lenin proclaimed: “For us, the cinema is the most important of the arts.” The leader of the Russian Revolution said this around 1922, the year Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts rose to power in Italy, and later decreed: “Film work facilitates fascist penetration.” Both extremes of Left and right recognized the central role motion pictures could play in propaganda, in reaching the masses with their messages and agitating them to take action. Albanian director Roland Sejko’s The Image Machine of Alfredo C. is about an Italian cameraman who shot newsreel-type footage for Il Duce’s fascists and then for the Communists in Albania.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Senate approval of President Biden’s FDA Commissioner nominee Robert Califf, MD, was barely covered by news media.
But everyone who cares about conflicts of interest at the FDA will find the choice disheartening.
According to disclosures in a November 20, 2013 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) opinion piece that Califf cowrote: