Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for January 27
Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps; Peace accords signed to end Vietnam War; 3 Astronauts die in Apollo One fire; Mozart born.
Breakfast Tune Banjo Solo – Turkish March
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
The US Is Violating International Law in Venezuela
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
As President Trump announces that the US will recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s new leader and sitting President Nicolás Maduro breaks off relations with the United States, we speak with a former UN independent expert who says the US is staging an illegal coup in the country. Alfred de Zayas, who visited Venezuela as a UN representative in 2017, says, “The mainstream media has been complicit in this attempted coup. … This reminds us of the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003.” We also speak with Miguel Tinker Salas, professor at Pomona College and author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela and Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Transcript:
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- The Democratic Party Is Further to the Right Than Most Voters
Robert R. Raymond
- We’ve Reached Peak Political Absurdity
Paul Street
- Teachers Are Rising Up to Resist Neoliberal Attacks on Education
Henry A. Giroux
- US Taxpayers Have Been Funding Big Business’s Wars for 233 Years
Barbara G. Ellis
- Afghanistan Set the Stage for the US’s Implosion
Tom Engelhardt
- The US’s “Economic Blockade” Paved the Way for Venezuela Coup Attempt
Amy Goodman & Juan González
- Progressives Helped Pave The Way For These ‘Russian Asset’ Bernie Smears
Caitlin Johnstone
Something to think about over coffee prozac
Generation X exists! New Weezer album is the sound of our middle-aged middle-child syndrome
Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
I didn’t think it was possible to feel any more seen than I did the moment on “Saturday Night Live” last week when a character played by Kenan Thompson declared, “I’m Gen X. I just sit on the sidelines and watch the world burn.” But then a few days later, Weezer released a surprise “Teal Album” composed entirely of cover songs. (Their “Black Album” of new material is still slated for March.) And if there’s a better summation of my goofy-ass, overlooked demographic than Rivers Cuomo and crew crooning “No Scrubs,” I’d like to hear it.
We Gen Xers had already slunk into our middle child status long before our baby siblings, the Millennials, came along. I recall being in my early twenties and having a ten years-older colleague inform me that his generation and his children’s generation were going to run the world, while mine would be remembered for nothing special. I assumed he hadn’t yet discovered “The Real World” or Wreckx-n-Effect. Yet I also accepted he was probably on to something.
Just start with the terminology. “Boomer” and “Millennial” both roll enticingly off the tongue; they connote seismic shifts and ambitious scale. In contrast, before my peers were crowned Gen X — ie “Generation Big Fat Zero” — we were called “Slackers,” inspired by the holy trinity of Marty McFly, Superchunk and young Richard Linklater’s seminal portrait of quirky, pop culture obsessed randos. We might as well have been called “Sad Trombone Sound.” You know the kid who had the receding hairline while he was still in high school? That is us.
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So when Weezer headlined a Carnival Cruise a few years ago, it felt one part droll commentary and one part, “Yeah, but all inclusive is nice.” And when a Cleveland teen — and then the entire Internet — got a notion that the band ought to cover Toto’s early ’80s homage to an entire continent, Weezer cheerfully obliged last year with their version of “Africa,” complete with a Weird Al music video to accompany it. And when they now offer their spin on “Take On Me,” they do so in the full and complete knowledge that no one was taking Norwegian synth pop terribly seriously the first time around. When I listen to it, I am practicing a skill set my era can truly claim to have brought some real innovation to: Uninhibitedly enjoying cheesy things by being super conspicuous about how cheesy they are. Trust me. I used to serve Mentos Jell-O shots at my parties.
Have we now come full circle, or have we just always been standing in place, wearily accepting our Jan Brady status in the societal pecking order? I can’t tell. But there is a certain sweet relief in being part of the group that doesn’t bear the full responsibility for screwing the planet up or the entire onus of fixing it. History may indeed judge us for sitting on the sidelines and watching the world burn, but at least we kept a sense of humor, and knew ourselves well enough to prefer singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” to actually believing it.
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