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bill c. davis
Award-Winning Playwright, Longtime Common Dreams Contributor Bill C. Davis Dies at 69
Mar 04, 2021
Award-winning playwright, artist, political activist, and veteran Common Dreams contributor Bill C. Davis has died at the age of 69 due to complications from COVID-19.
According to the Washington Post, Davis' death on February 26 at a care facility in Connecticut was confirmed by his sister, Patricia Marks. The newspaper reports that the celebrated author of numerous plays--including the Tony-nominated "Mass Appeal"--had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last month, shortly after being hospitalized with the coronavirus.
As the obituary posted in Deadline details:
Born in Ellenville, NY, and raised in the state's Hudson Valley, Davis attended Catholic schools and, after graduating from Poughkeepsie's Marist College, worked at a residential community for developmentally disabled and emotionally disturbed adults in Rhinebeck, NY. He wrote Mass Appeal, about the conflicting personalities of a stern, conservative priest and a younger, rebellious seminarian, during his time in Rhinebeck.
Davis also wrote the screenplay for the 1984 film adaptation of "Mass Appeal" directed by Glenn Jordan, with Jack Lemmon taking the role of the elder priest and Zeljko Ivanek the young upstart.
Discussing the subject matter of "Mass Appeal" in a 2012 interview with the Irish Independent, Davis said beyond the tensions manifested by the life within the Catholic Church, the play is "about what the life of an artist might be. I have a tension within me between the desire to say what people want and to say what they need to hear."
Bill ran an unsuccessful congressional campaign in Connecticut in 2005 as a Green Party candidate.
Starting in 2001, Davis began contributing op-eds and columns on a variety of subjects to Common Dreams.
For more information about his life and works and a Celebration of his Life in the spring, please go to his website: www.billcdavis.com.
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Up Against The Hard Break
Cable news an accomplice to all we have been through these past four years, up to and including January 6, 2021
Jan 06, 2021
Cable news is the default place to watch events, such as the January 6th, 2021 eruption in Washington DC. Apart from bearing witness to the human avalanche flooding the Capitol, we were also subjected to the cliches and shallow phrases being coined on the spot and then repeated by the next hired hand at all cable stations. The insufferable posturing of the well-paid anchors (an ironic appellation for these persons) wears thin quickly. They have been signaling their virtues as they have posed being stunned by the president for four years. In fact, they aren't stunned - or shocked - or speechless, but grateful in their own perverse way. They mug for the camera as they report, "what he has done this time" and under their breath, they thank him for giving them a show for the night.
Gore Vidal called us - the United States of Amnesia. And this isn't about remembering the Russian or French Revolution. Sure - the extreme disparity between rich and poor sets the stage for a siege of government buildings. Yes - feeling for decades that we do not have representative government can become the parched underbrush for a flash wildfire. The current hysterical analysis is aimed at the spark - this strange, bloated man who spit fire at the dry underbrush, and who is, in truth, not an anomaly. He is a logical conclusion of decades of government distrust, and January 6, 2021 was a flaming whirlwind.
So when I hear the indignation and horror from the likes of Tapper, Cooper, Lemon, Todd, Joe, Cuomo - I say, please. You and your handlers and bosses made the monster - gave him air and validity day after day - hour after hour. Cable and Network news stood this man up for all the months leading up to the election and then used him as programming in the ensuing four years.But as the cable stations and their copywriters and personalities reported breathlessly about what was happening before their eyes and their lenses I thought back to 2015/2016 and remembered the months and months that these same stations and personalities had this unbalanced word salad spinner on their "shows" nonstop. He had 2 billion dollars of free air time and an open line to every well-paid personality on every cable channel and network news. Hell - he was a guest on SNL - dancing coolly in a blue light.
He was not a worthy news story - he was entertainment. He had nothing really profound or constructive to say. He was Howard Stern and Jerry Springer and Judge Judy rolled into one inarticulate oil slick. But because Cable and network "news" is NOT commercial-free the powers that be there must book the adrenaline rush. They would cut away to every rally - they let him call in - they bemoaned how unlikable Hillary was - they booked and booked this certifiable case study of a narcissist again and again.
Anderson Cooper regularly would have on his show this very odd spokeswoman for Trump - Katrina Pierson. Also - Kayleigh McEnany would be on with him often. Both were photogenic in a Fox kind of way and Anderson let them say any crazy off-the-wall angry rant they seemed to have prepared. They would spew insane garbage about Hillary - unchecked or even queried by the hapless host, whose only job was to let them unravel in their coiffed, robotic well-spoken way. He kind of smiled in a bemused "get a load of her" way. My question was, what qualified them to be on any show? "Trump campaign spokesperson?" Maybe once - but somehow the bookers at CNN et al thought they were arresting and provocative and somehow the station could measure how much the viewers stayed with the show.
And of course, the main act himself was the crackpot who was the jackpot and all the stations and networks kept pulling the one-armed bandit. Were they unaware of the kindling that populated America? Were they oblivious or indifferent to what toxicity they were piping into the dilated eyes and ears of the malcontents? He was the high-pitched avatar of a certain kind of demented tribal patriotism and it played.
Any media news company's only responsibility is to make sure the ads they sell, mostly to drug companies, are viewed by as many people as possible. So when I hear the indignation and horror from the likes of Tapper, Cooper, Lemon, Todd, Joe, Cuomo - I say, please. You and your handlers and bosses made the monster - gave him air and validity day after day - hour after hour. Cable and Network news stood this man up for all the months leading up to the election and then used him as programming in the ensuing four years.
There needs to be a law. If you call yourself a "NEWS" network, channel, or show - No commercials - No musical underscoring. CNN - Cable NEWS Network - if you are NEWS you are not programming for adrenaline rushes. You report events. Emotions may happen on their own but that cannot be your agenda. Fox NEWS - no commercials. MSNBC - no commercials, graphics, or underscoring. I know this has been well-trod territory but it needs to be revisited. The same way you cannot call certain things medicine - or food - you cannot call what you serve up to the American public NEWS if your eye is on the hard break for the ten things you have to sell before you return to the "urgent" matter at hand.
Trump is just one consequence of this current model. Overall, the statement to all of us with this way of presenting vital, civic, national, international, and political information to us is, your main human value is as a consumer - not as a thinking citizen. In fact, we don't want you thinking, we want as many emotions as we can manipulate out of you. We want you in a state of vulnerable receptivity to products - again, mostly drugs.
I repeat - this needs to be a law. In the meantime, all personalities on these networks, please stop performing and posturing - spare us all your ire and indignation and try to understand how the umbrella under which you function is, with your consent and participation, an accomplice to all we have been through these past four years, up to and including January 6, 2021.
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An Alternate National Food Mandate
America seems to have a romance with disease.
Nov 11, 2020
Here is my National Mandate. Close all fast-food chains. Put orange cone roadblocks on all Dunkin' Donuts drive-thrus. Ban the sale of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The war was not between those two Colas; it was a war against the human body.
The masks mask the elephant in the room. No human being can make a potent immune system with a diet of processed food and sugar. This promiscuous virus seems to have a field day with the obese and the immune-compromised. The national and worldwide addiction to sugar presents a feeding frenzy for a virus that, like all viruses, feeds on sugar. Where are the scientists and leaders who can guide the populations of the world to actually combat the virus by starving it and also by strengthening its targets? We are told to behave like boxers in a corner with our gloves up to our faces as we are pummeled.
We need to resuscitate the slogan Resist and put it at the center of our actual physical bodies. The Thymus gland makes T-cells. Thymus is a Greek word for courage and anger; two strong words that will strengthen resistance.
Ireland determined recently that the rolls produced by the fast-food chain Subway have too much sugar in it to be called bread. This just begins to tell the tale. Biden, Fauci, and the posse of "experts" say nothing about what evolution and nature has made clear - T-cells are our Personal Protective Device. You cannot make powerful T-cells from a Big Mac, fries and Coke or a cream filled, white flour doughnut. A virus can present itself to a human body and a human body armed with healthy T-cells will most likely evict it quickly and not give it a chance to colonize and inflame. The primary exhortation from the top should be about about this aspect of human health.
Government guidance and a support stipend is the best path forward. Like Victory gardens during WWII, there ought to be individual citizen projects of cultivating potent health as the wall of resistance to this virus which, like a predator, will pick out the weak targets in a herd.
I can't speak for the rest of the world but America seems to have a romance with disease. Cable stations exist to sell drugs and as they do, they romanticize disease. The wistful looks of the stricken, the sentimental music, the loving looks of spouse and family on the patient all work to make the disease seem to be a pathway to love and enlightenment, and the patented drug you must take forever will keep you alive long enough to bask in this glow. Hopefully one day we will look at these commercials the way we look at doctor-recommended cigarette ads from the 1950's we now watch on Youtube with horror and macabre amusement.
In the case of COVID, we are presented with numbers and charts and interviews with beleaguered hospital workers. Experts tell us what they know and what they don't know both ending up by the end of the interview to be useless. By omission or myopia, these experts seem to be saying to all of us is, "Eat any junk you want and live any way you care to but wear a mask and wash your hands and stay six feet apart." This has always had the echo of six feet under - a distance that has the hint of death to it.
The ultimate infantilizing of the citizenry - mask, wash up, and go to your room. Not to say that these prescriptions don't have a place at this moment but to me, if this is all you've got, it smacks of impotence and surrender and a serious abdication.
Driving here in Connecticut in the morning I will pass a line at the drive-thru at Dunkin' Donuts - 20 cars long. Burger King will do "no contact delivery." It's not the contact that's the real or only risk factor it's what is being delivered. Processed, sugar-laced food is like sludge in a human body and a human body can only make new cells with what it is being given. The revolution does indeed start in the kitchen.
Until the feckless and myopic experts begin to take this point as seriously as they do the mask instruction, no matter how much obedience they are able to influence, we will continue to have more spikes than the shoe franchise at a Trump golf course.
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