James H McLaren @JamesHMcLaren@social.cleverlibre.org

Our nation and its leaders must never be afraid to speak the truth about our past.

Wookiee Goldberg

Aww! 😢 #RIP Tom Smothers, older half of Smothers Brothers, whose skits and songs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late 1960s brought political satire and a spirit of youthful irreverence to network television, paving the way for shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” died on Tuesday at his home at 86 “following a recent battle with cancer,” a spokesman for the National Comedy Center announced on behalf of the family. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/arts/television/tom-smothers-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/arts/television/tom-smothers-dead.html?utm_source=press.coop

This really hurts. Tom (Tommy) Smothers, who along with his brother Dick formed the Smothers Brothers, has died at 86. Despite his character being played as a dummy, in reality he was the driving force of the comedy duo, pushing them from a fairly straightforward singing comedy team into realms of free speech, anti-Vietnam war, and anti-censorship realms that incurred the wrath of President Johnson, who pushed CBS to cancel their show ("The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour") -- which ultimately happened.

When they featured (in September 1967) once blacklisted Peter Seeger singing his anti-Vietnam war "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" all hell broke lose and CBS cut the performance from the tape. After pressure from the brothers, CBS permitted them to bring him back for another performance of the song in February the next year, which did air -- but the brothers relationship with CBS was beyond repair, especially when CBS tampered with a performance by Harry Belafonte later that year.

It's impossible for me to express here the impact of the Smothers Brothers, or reasonably point at a single representative sample of their vast work, or their many interviews about these topics, but you may find this Q&A interesting as a starting point.

Peace Tommy. You deserve it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Cw2lZt72Y

I don’t know who needs to hear this but when you’re putting that potato masher away make sure it’s not going to get the drawer stuck.

if i hit my follower goal i will plug it in

We did it you guys. We made rice from plants.

Excellent. Via @parismarx

Do these people ever listen to themselves? https://www.comicsands.com/miss-france-pixie-cut-woke-2666659572.html?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=infeed&utm_campaign=linkprogram

Happy Summer Solstice from the South Pole! The sun reached an annual peak of 23.5 degrees above the horizon yesterday. 🌞

People who say of Nazis “the way you deal with bad ideas is by defeating them in the marketplace of ideas” are offering assumptions that a) Nazi ideas have not already been defeated on the merits, and are still valid and worthy to consider; b) Nazis will promote their ideas in bloodless debate.

Who's ready for Christmas dinner?😋

It's weird to me that Musk is CEO of like 5 companies and no one has drawn the conclusion that CEO is an incredibly easy job that shouldn't pay anywhere near as much as it does

From the Orlando Sentinel today. What it’s like in DeSantistan.

In a world full of Melanias,

Be a Rosalynn

“ They are anti-responsibility, anti-accountability and anti-consequence, yet dress themselves in the trappings of rugged individualism and hard work. They live in a world of hypocrisy, where regulation — societal conditions built to protect people — is an unfair force, but the effects of their actions (which create the societal conditions that demand regulation) are somehow justified, because the tech industry is special.”

https://wheresyoured.at/p/software-has-beaten-the-world