There's a line in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" that always makes me smile -- "There's good people in Alabama"...because it's true. I worked in Birmingham 1982-85 and some folks there are still my friends 35 years later. They were/are smart, open-minded people who... 1/3
...liked to slam dance to the Jim Carroll Band or make fun of backwoods sheriffs. I never lived in Texas, Mississippi or Florida but I know it's the same way - lots of good people doing their best amid a bigger, backwards culture that can elect the worst leaders. It's because 2/3
...of those great humans that I never damn an entire state, or wish it ill health, or catching a virus, etc. Focus anger where it belongs - on hate, bigotry and the politicians and hucksters who exploit it. Pray for the many good people in those places, and their good health 3/3
Oops -- just to clear something up (as raised by a reader), the "There's good people in Alabama" line is from their 1976 live LP that I listened to religiously in HS, not the studio version most folks are familiar with

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More from @Will_Bunch

28 Feb
1. OK, done with my column, my "back to brunch" (at home with my family pod) and Sunday chores, so here's my thread on why 1970 is the greatest music year of all time. But I have to start with two...
2. caveats. First, most critics think of 1970 for the rise of the singer-songwriter, to which I say...meh. Second, some horrible things happened in 1970 off-vinyl -- the death of Jimi and Janis, breakup of the Beatles. No studio records from the Stones or the Who, BUT...
3. 1970 was the last super great year for the one-off pop-rock 45, including "Venus" by Shocking Blue, "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum, and of course "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image
Read 9 tweets
17 Feb
1. On Rush Limbaugh's passing: Harry Truman supposedly said "it's a damn shame when anyone dies." Fair enough. But

Consider this timeline:

1985: Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" predicts a world where entertainment values wreck civil discourse

1987: Reagan's FCC...
2. ...kills the Fairness Doctrine and creates the possibility of conservative talk radio

1988: Sacramento radio guy Rush Limbaugh goes national with right-wing talk

Now, Limbaugh (as his later soulmate, Glenn Beck) was basically the nightmare predicted in "Amusing Ourselves...
3. ...to Death" -- a smooth entertainer with no real political ideas worth discussing, just a talent for funneling white rage into a 3-hour show. Yet in doing so, he changed U.S. politics forever and set the stage for Trump's American fascism

Before "Lock her up!" there was...
Read 8 tweets
27 Oct 20
1. I took 2 hours off last night to celebrate my adult son's birthday. I came back and the world was literally on fire. And I am furious about what is happening in DC, Philly, everywhere. I don't want to hear 1 word about civility. Fuck civility. We need radical change
2. In DC, I saw Trump take HIS new personal Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, out on his Mussolini balcony to wave the final degradation of the Supreme Court in America's face. This is fascism, and if Democrats do nothing in 2021 it will fester. We must expand...
3. ...the court to undo this stain, and expand the judiciary with new jurists who will embody America's diversity instead of crushing it. But this depends on winning an election that Trump, Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh have shown their willingness to corrupt. I was trying to...
Read 9 tweets
12 Oct 20
1. Some thoughts on Trump, Sanford -- and one of the defining political events of the last 50 years: Reagan essentially kicking off his general election campaign in a city notorious for a racist killing, and ignoring that to proclaim his belief in "state's rights." It happened...
2. ...on August 3, 1980, at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Some urged Reagan not to go because it was just 16 years after the notorious KKK murder of three "Freedom Summer" civil rights workers in that county. But the Gipper cynically knew what he was...
3...doing: Sealing the bond of the GOP's "Southern Strategy" with the region's core of white supremacist voters. And it worked. I arrived in Alabama as a young journalist in early 1982 and saw the South turn red before my own eyes. Flash forward 40 years and America has a POTUS..
Read 12 tweets
22 Sep 20
1. OK, I know we're in a 30-minute news cycle, but I want to hold on for a moment to my rage about GA Sen. Kelly Loeffler, and her insane "Attila the Hun" TV ad that gives a wink and a nod to the idea it's a good thing to "eliminate liberal scribes." I want to tell a story...
2. ...because Loeffler's intemperate and potentially violent dog whistle reminded me of one of the greatest "scribes" to hang his hat in the senator's adopted state of Georgia -- Ralph McGill, who was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution from 1945 until the late 1960s
3. McGill was a visionary -- for his era. His views might seem tame to a liberal today. But McGill opposed segregation - which many of his white readers saw as their "way of life" - and was a moderate on civil rights. He vehemently fought the political hate rhetoric of his day.
Read 11 tweets
1 Sep 20
In The Will Bunch Newsletter that drops today in less than two hours, how and why Robert Mueller let America down in the Trump-Russia probe. Here's an excerpt -- you can read the whole thing w/ free, easy sign-up (see 2 tweets down). Here's a sneak peek: Image
Also flagging for environmentalists, a riff that won't be later published online, about a shameful Pa. link to plastics pollution in Africa Image
Join the thousands who've already signed up. It's free. It takes 5 seconds. What are you waiting for? Here's the link inquirer.com/newsletters/wi…
Read 4 tweets

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