Oh Boy It Never Ends: That awful MOTOWN CHRISTMAS special on NBC

Above is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jussie Smollett Is Nancy Mace's Life Coach" went up a little while ago. Nancy Mace is the new Jussie Smollett.

MOTOWN CHRISTMAS last night on NBC should go down as the worst Christmas special ever. I checked with Ava and C.I. to see if they planned to cover it (their latest is "Media: An idiot says he'll sue over art evaluation, two other idiots defend Trump's nominees") and they aren't covering it because of one awful person who was on the show. Not Smokey Robinson, C.I. asked immediately about Smokey -- a friend of hers -- and I said he was about the only thing worth praising. She was happy about that but due to one person participating, she was avoiding any comment.

So let me dive in.

If you tell me this is a "MOWTOWN" Christmas, it needs to be.

A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS means Diana Ross. She was the Queen of MOTOWN so no Diana means no MOTOWN in most of our minds. You also need Stevie Wonder, my grandmother pointed out. And she noted she has a MOTOWN CHRISTMAS album on vinyl -- released years ago and having nothing to do with the special NBC aired. It has Diana Ross on multiple tracks, Stevie Wonder, the Miracles, the Jackson 5 and the Temptations. Of those acts listed, only the Temptations and Smokey were on the special. Other big acts not on the special include Boyz 2 Men, Lionel Richie, The Chi-Lites, DeBarge, Toni Braxton, Tony! Toni! Tone, Nelly, Ne-Yo, Edwin Starr and the Spinners.

MOTOWN had other successful acts. Marvin Gaye, for example, was a solid second tier act. Never as popular as he wanted to be and prone to beating women because he couldn't deal with his bisxuality, Marvin did notch a few hits. If he'd listened to Berry Gordy, he might have become an actual star. Never happened. He kept recording garbage and being frustrated that it didn't sell. In the 70s, no one needed Marvin posing as Frank Sinatra -- especially since Marvin's voice was rather generic if he wasn't growling. There weren't a lot of megahits like The Temptations or The Four Tops or Stevie Wonder or Diana Ross or Smokey and the Miracles.

So Smokey and the Temptations were good and I'm glad they were on.

The worst performer?

Gladys Knight.

What a dried up, withered piece of garbage.

She was not a hit at MOTOWN and spent most of her time trashing Smokey and Diana. She especially trashed Marvin Gaye. She got ticked that her biggest hit at MOTOWN got remade by Marvin ("I Heard It Through The Grapevine") and did better on the charts than her version. She looked bad, she looked tired, she looked hagged out. And the voice is shot. Worst of all?

This was billed as MOTOWN CHRISTMAS and yet she performed three songs -- “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” and “Midnight Train to Georgia" -- none of which were MOTOWN hits. She and the Pips had those hits after they left MOTOWN and moved to BUDDAH RECORDS. Which led to more complaints from Gladys that MOTOWN had held her back. So why was she on the special? And, no, they didn't hold her back, she just did R&B at MOTOWN. It's at BUDDAH that she starts doing that adult contemporary crap and overemotes on it. She has the face of a bitter woman and she's earned it -- never forget the hissy fit she threw when George Michael (one of the great soul singers -- blue eyed soul or otherwise) got nominated for an R&B Grammy. Gladys couldn't shut her damn mouth -- he was nominated with Aretha Franklin for "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me" -- his hit duet with Aretha. Gladys hated Aretha as well.

Which brings up the other hater: Martha Reeves.

I'm not sure what scandal got her kicked off the Detroit City Council in the '00s but it wasn't pretty. Nor was Martha last night. She had the worst wig/weave since Margaret Kimberley of BLACK AGENDA REPORT. She couldn't afford something better? Then wear a scarf around your head. I'm serious. It would have looked fine. But that ugly weave/wig looked like she dug it out of someone's garbage can. She wore tacky jewelry as well -- as both my grandmother and my girlfriend noticed.

Martha was always garbage. My grandmother has had the scoop there for years. A secretary at MOTOWN who hated all the others who got breaks before her. She was part of the Vandellas and, as they did with Diana and Smokey, they would be billed later as Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (the way that later happened with Diana Ross & the Supremes and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles). There was no woman she didn't hate at MOTOWN -- she even hated Tammi Terrell. Martha and her group had 12 top forty hits -- five were top ten hits The biggest was "Dancing In The Streets" which made number two. She sneered at material offered to her group and then, after refusing it, would have a hissy fit that the song ended up being a hit for someone else. The hits stopped coming in 1967 as her battles with other women were only increasing. From WIKIPEDIA:

However it was the infighting among the members of the Vandellas that led to their problems. Kelly was the first to be let go after reportedly missing shows, as well as getting into altercations with Reeves.^[5] There were many instances where these "fights" happened on stage. Kelly was fired in 1967 and was replaced by Martha Reeves' sister Lois.^[7] Simultaneously, the group's name was officially changed to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, to conform with the company's recent changes of The Supremes' and The Miracles' names to reflect their featured lead singers. During this time, Vandellas records including "(We've Got) Honey Love", "Sweet Darlin'" and "Taking My Love and Leaving Me" were issued as singles with diminishing success.

In the seventies, she would trash Diana Ross. But for most of the 60s, the woman she trashed the most was Gladys Horton -- someone supposedly an angel and loved by everyone. Gladys was part of The Marvelettes. They were the first MOTOWN artists -- solo or group -- to have a number one hit on the pop charts ("Please Mr. Postman"). They would have ten more top forty pop hits. And Martha hated Gladys with a passion. (Again, everybody supposedly loved Gladys so this was another one-sided feud carried out by Martha.)

Martha left MOTOWN in the early 70s. Diana Ross had a great solo recording career and had just been nominated for an Oscar for LADY SINGS THE BLUES. Martha told everyone she was going to show Diana how it was done. And she . . . did not. She never had a top forty hit again and none of her five solo albums ever charted in the US -- one, her first one, made it to number 95 on the Australian charts. That's the only country it charged in and the other four didn't chart anywhere -- not even Australia.

Martha attacked Diana constantly. Randy what's-his-name was an assistant to Martha for awhile. He authored CALL HER MISS ROSS -- a hit job on Diana. He later published a different version and confessed -- in the end notes -- that Martha hated Diana and fed him things for the book that turned out not be true.

It's people like Randy J that destroyed Diana's US charting. They spread lies about her and it just fed into sexism and racism here in the US and she didn't get another pop hit.

So his pathetic -- and hidden in end notes -- apology/mea culpa is b.s. And that's before you register that he wrote a book on Diana in 1981 that didn't attack Diana on every page.

So Martha sang her number two hit ("Dancing In The Streets") last night because what's more Christmas than that? Apparently nothing. She croaked her way through the song.

MOTOWN's biggest period was the 60s and 70s. And they really needed Diana and Stevie on the program. But they could have also had other real stars like Boyz 2 Men and Toni Braxton. Eryka Badu is on MOTOWN. There was no reason to go with Gladys and Martha. Or all the newbies -- not on MOTOWN, never on the MOTOWN label.

I was appalled by the special.

Going out with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Thursday, December 11, 2024. We know so very little when we don't know our history and we can fall for a lot of lies as a result. The next four years will be rough and tough but what's awful on the Dem side is the liars who want to push the party to the right and lie to people to try to get them to go along with a rightward push. All that and Aaron Mate finally gets the attention he's earned.

At SLATE, Christina Cauterucci writes:

Once upon a time, politicians refrained from using slurs to describe members of minority groups. Instead, they expressed their hatred through euphemism and impersonal fearmongering, lest they be deemed uncivilized. For public officials, it seemed like enough to pass discriminatory laws and promote negative stereotypes—they didn’t need to name-call too.

That era is over. Last week, a group of trans-rights activists staged a sit-in at the Capitol to protest a resolution, proposed by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, that would prohibit transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the building. After a few of them were arrested for protesting, Mace herself headed down to the offices of the U.S. Capitol Police to make a video at the scene.

Here’s how Mace explained the situation: “Some tr—y protesters showed up at the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill.” To make sure no viewers would miss the slur, Mace posted it with subtitles.

Mace read it like a throwaway line, but it was clearly calculated. Her Republican peers in the House have already made a practice of calling transgender people—including their soon-to-be colleague, incoming transgender Rep. Sarah McBride—by the wrong pronouns and names. If Mace wanted to be the national face of keeping trans people out of bathrooms, she had to go further. So she used a slur. Later that day, she did it again.

Her escalation marks a new stage of U.S. anti-transgender politics. When the current backlash against trans visibility began, about five years ago, right-wing politicians limited their rhetoric mostly to fantasies of protection: protecting trans children from medical therapies, protecting cisgender children from being beaten in sports, and protecting all children from malicious abusers in bathrooms. Conservatives have since expanded their pearl-clutching to transgender adults—but often, it’s still under that same guise of protection. Medicaid shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care for anyone, they said—unless patients jump through a series of arduous and time-consuming hoops—because it protects against future regret. However disingenuous all this was, it still suggested that most right-wing politicians considered it politically smart to refrain from trashing trans people in extreme ways.

Nancy Mace and her kind are disgusting.

As Ruth notes, we're in for "A world of hurt" on January 20th. And we're there for a number of reasons including the racism and sexism in the media (including Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and Katrina vanden Heuvel's THE NATION).

48 and 49%.

What's that?

AP's current toll for the US presidential election. Kamala's at 48% and Satan's at 49%. There are a few more votes still to be counted. When we repeatedly note that here, it's not saying, "She can still win!" We don't elect the president by popular vote. We need to. We need to do away with the electoral college. But we haven't. We've made no move on -- even when Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the presidency.

You want to increase voter turnout? Make voting matter.

It doesn't matter with the electoral college. I voted knowing Kamala would carry my state. When you know that, your vote doesn't really matter. If every vote mattered in the US presidential elections, you would probably get a higher turnout. Instead, we're left with the reality that we know our state will go this or that way -- know that in many states -- so why bother voting? Life's busy, life's tough, we all are short on enjoyment time, why vote if you already know the outcome.

So that's us in California, that's Texas that will go GOP, that's this state and that state. Only in the swing states does your vote really matter. Popular vote determining the president would most likely increase voter turnout across the country.

But the reason we note those totals over and over since the election is because it's reality.

As opposed to what the media told you immediately after the election and continues to attempt to lie about.

And they do that for a number of reasons including the right-wing tilt of the media. It's not a left wing tilt. It used to be a centrist tilt but it's gone on over to the right-wing.

Trump has no mandate. He has no landslide.

Now if most Americans grasped that -- especially Democratic voters -- it would harm a lot of people.

Like?

US House Rep Seth Moulton for one. Senator Mark Warner for another -- see Rebecca's "old man mark warner needs to retire already." People like that -- lazy fat asses who would just as soon sell their own mothers to get a vote -- who want to lie because they don't want to have to fight to defend women's rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, or Civil Rights, or human life for that matter. They're cowards and they're liars. And they will destroy the Democratic Party given the chance.

Simon Rosenberg. E-mails come in insisting that I have him all wrong.

No, I don't.

He may be a progressive today or pose as one. I have no idea.

When I bring him up, I'm talking about what he did in 2004 and 2005 right after that election. That's when he insulted Black women, that's when he was pushing for Dems to stop supporting ROE V WADE and abortion rights, that's when he rallied against LGBTQ+ rights.

He's done a 180, you say? I doubt that very seriously. WIKIPEDIA:

Simon Rosenberg (born October 23, 1963) is a Democratic political strategist and blogger. He was the founder of New Democrat Network (NDN), a centrist think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.^[1]

According to the 2015 book How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, Rosenberg and NDN were instrumental in shifting control of the Democratic Party away from labor unions and toward Silicon Valley businesses.^[2] Rosenberg said in 1999, "Our problem as a party is that the biggest source of our venture capital now comes from labor, which is a group that's becoming less and less important, and representing less and less of a percentage of American voters. [...] We have to replace labor's investment in the party with investment from another source, and hopefully from a source that's growing."^[2]

Rosenberg shuttered NDN in March 2024.^[3]

That's who you're wasting your time defending. NDN was the DLC made over. It was a right-leaning, Joe Lieberman hand-holding group of trash.

He waited until March of this year to shut it down. Now I felt sorry for him in 2004. He seemed gay and he was publicly gay hating, so I felt sorry for him. Closet cases can be so pathetic. But even that bit of sympathy didn't stop me from calling him out.

Rachel Maddow called him out as well. I'm not remembering a lot of others calling him out.

Simon was running for DNC chair (he would drop out of the race in February 2005 and tell his few supporters to back Howard Dean).

We see the same garbage over and over.

REUTERS notes, "The job of DNC chair is largely administrative and involves logistics and fundraising. But focus on who will next fill the role has grown given the breadth of the Democrats' losses and urgent calls from some party members for a complete reset." The first sentence is about the duties of the chair. Again, we need to make sure the person going in has the skills required. That's all the jobs about.

After the 2004 election, Simon went around insisting Dems needed to move further to the right and you might have thought this would result in his being called out. Very few bothered to call him out. We did. And after John Kerry lost to Bully Boy Bush, people lied to get what they wanted -- they wanted to push the Democratic Party further to the right.

And that's what the continued nonsense of 'oh, we lost the voters!' is about. It was a close election. We needed better turnout. Turnout was depressed and suppressed by all the attack pieces posted at THE NATION, all the segments trashing Kamala at DEMOCRACY NOW!, not one article praising Kamala by THE PROGRESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES. These are outlets that beg us for money and they used their space to tear down Kamala Harris. Nothing she did was good enough. Donald Trump was elected because of that.

No one should be giving a dime to DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES and so many other crap-ass outlets. A friend at THE NATION begged this week for an article on trans issues to be highlighted here. I replied, "Sure, and you can go back in a time machine and remove all those attack pieces on Kamala, right? Including the interns editorial that Kamala didn't deserve anyone's vote?"

What we need to focus on is turnout for 2028. What we need to focus on is how to respond -- and respond rapidly -- to attacks on our candidate -- especially when these attacks come from outlets that depend upon our money to stay afloat. Always begging us to send money. Only a damn fool would send money to Amy Goodman or THE NATION et al right now. Only a damn fool.

There were plenty of damn fools on the 'left' who attacked Kamala non-stop. She wasn't supporting Lina Khan! That's what the whores would say. And then they'd tell you that even JD Vance supports Lina Kahn! And attack Kamala and build up Trump. They did it -- from the 'left.'

POST-LEFT WATCH wonders:

They lied and they lie. And they think we're going to forget. We're not forgetting anymore than we're forgiving.

They built up Satan and they built up grifter Jill Stein. Where is Jill these days?

Exactly. She's a grifter, she's a fake ass.

We'll go out with an example of another fake ass.

For now, I pray that we survive the next four years.

The world of liars today who keep trying to water down the Democratic Party instead of strengthening it, they also fail to impart some basic wisdom.

If we do make it to 2028, the Democrats are very likely to win regardless of whom they nominated.

When the GOP embraces hate, America grows tired of them very quickly.

They wear out their welcome.

They preach hate and they pursue programs and policies that the American people are against -- even if it takes them a while to figure that out.

And if you'll watch, even though the new Congress isn't sworn in yet nor is Satan, you can see the signs as to why the American people are going to turn against the GOP. For example? Aliss Higham (NEWSWEEK) reports:

Republican Congressman Mark Alford has touted raising the retirement age to help cut federal government costs.

Speaking on Fox News, the Missouri representative said GOP members had recently sat down with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] under Donald Trump, beginning in January, to explore ways "to cut our budget."

"I think there's a way, when people are living longer, they're retiring later, then on the front end, we can move that retirement age back a little bit," Alford said. The current full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later, and is the earliest age at which workers can begin getting Social Security benefits without any financial penalty for claiming early.

Alford said the "$36 trillion" national debt and its interest payments is "unsustainable," with a whittling down of government spending required to "right the ship."

So to deliver even more tax cuts for the obscenely rich, the GOP is gearing up to raise the retirement age. Or take this from Jeff Schogol (TASK & PURPOSE):

A growing chorus is calling for cuts to Veteran Affairs disability benefits as a way to save federal dollars — a move that ignores the very real costs of two decades of war, and could cause irreparable harm to generations of veterans, experts warn.

The most recent call for cuts is a widely criticized opinion article in The Economist on Nov. 28 that described veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly generous.” Experts told Task & Purpose that the essay is representative of widespread public misperceptions that threaten to reduce veterans’ compensation for service-connected health conditions.

The Economist piece echoes an argument made by the Washington Post’s editorial board last year that limiting disability payments to veterans would help get America’s financial house in order.

These arguments may now have a real chance of becoming law.

Policies laid out in Project 2025, touted as a blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks. Produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., the policy guide states that a growing number of health conditions that qualify for VA disability are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service.”

In mid-November, President-elect Donald Trump has tappedRussell T. Vought, one of the key players in Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a powerful federal post that oversees government spending.

And then there are the efforts to repaint insurrectionists as heroes.

You've got Public Citizen noting:

Washington, D.C. — Today, President-elect Donald J. Trump declared on his social media platform that, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“The President has no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment. Trump’s claim deserves ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong, and it will not come to pass, no matter what Trump fantasizes.

“However, the statement does highlight Trump’s utter disregard for protecting the environment or human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push policies that jeopardize health, safety and planetary well-being.

“Of special importance, Public Citizen has noted Trump’s efforts to use national security designations to force bailouts of coal power plants during his firm term — which Trump may seek to expand to all domestic oil and gas production, transportation, and export, especially with Trump’s declaration that his Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum would have a seat on the National Security Council.

“This, along with other moves the administration is likely to take starting January 20, offers a more realistic and insidious Trump scheme to allow Big Oil to sidestep an array of environmental laws by designating domestic fossil fuel production and export as essential for national security.”

These are not things you can support and then run easily for re-election.

Let's get some humor in here. Trashy FOX "NEWS" and the gutter rats on it did an insulting segment on First Lady Jill Biden where they insisted that Jill was attracted to Satan Trump. No woman is attracted to Satan Trump which is why his current wife got a redo on the prenup. From Marcia's "Top 10 reasons Jill Biden would never be interested in Trump:"

1) She's never been a chubby chaser, let alone someone to run after the morbidly obese.

2) While Trump's never minded sporting lipstick on his collar, Jill knows damn well that orange foundation Trump wears will burn a hole through fabric.

3) His halitosis.

4) He farts with each step he takes.

5) She believes in marriage.

6) Hooking up with a rapist has never been on her bingo card.

7) She believes in and supports education.

8) Long ago, as a teenager, she made the decision to never couple with a man whose boobs were bigger than her own. As David Bautista has noted, Trump "has jugs, like Dolly Parton."

9) While she enjoys primates and animal documentaries, she has no desire to mate with an orangutang.

10) A bad boy might be intriguing but a traitor is a buzz kill.

Let's not another fake ass poser. Aaron Mate of Mate-Taibi-Halper-and-Scum.

At long last, Aaron Mate is finally getting the attention he's always craved. Speaking of I Need Attention Benjamin . . .

Susan Benjamin who goes by the stage name Medea. Actors have stage names and we all know that there's nothing real about Susan. There she is with registered sex offender, convicted pedophile Scott Ritter. You stand with Ritter, you stand with trash.

Here's the backstory on Susan's current problems. CODEPINK represents as a women's group. Don't dig too deep into those roots. Jodi who is the money behindf the project -- which is why she was able to marshal the group against John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and others seeking the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination (Jodi supported Barack and was, in fact, a bundler for Barack -- a detail that proved most embarrassing for Jodi when discovered in the summer of 2008 after she had deployed CODEPINK to bird dog Barack's opponents) -- Anyway, Jodi's the money of the group and she's gotten rather tired of Susan Benjamin's cozying up to Scott Ritter. It's bad for donations and it's bad for the brand. And when Susan announced she would be speaking at the faux Rage Against the War Machine, it appalled members of CODEPINK because they don't understand why anyone would be part of event featuring a convicted pedophile. So, faced with a huge rebellion within the ranks, Jodi had to tell Susan "NO!" Now, a few years later, Susan's taken the stage with Ritter and it's causing Jodi more problems. Things were so much easier for Jodi when she was just bungling her duties working for then-Governor Jerry Brown. So Susan's being told, yet again, to pipe down or find her way to the exit door.

It's Jodi's own fault for letting 72 year old Susan Benjamin remain the face of the group. I can remember as far back as 2005 when CODEPINK was facing criticism for being all White and all middle aged. They're still basically all White and Susa is still holding the mike.

The following sites updated: