But the Market Shall Police Itself

Our white, decrepit, conservative friends at the Supreme Court are at it again. And, yes I realize that, technically speaking, Clarence Uncle Tom Thomas is a black man, but just don't tip him off to that fact. (See Orlando Patterson's review of the recently-released account of the Judge's vampire-mirror pathology for further instruction.) In yesterday's ruling taking down public school integration, the usual fucking suspects effectively spun back the clock on race progress in this country by about 50 years to that glorious Leave It to Beaver time in America where homogeneity was king. Won't be long now before The Authorities will be dusting off and rolling out the old firehoses.

Hello Elvis, Buddy, and Bill! Hello "Colored" drinking fountains! And, hello, to you David Byrne's "(Nothing But) Flowers" drifting from my car stereo speakers this morning...

This was a Pizza Hut, Now it's all covered with daisies...

Okay, tell you what, Rich White Guys, I'll make you a deal on behalf of the rest of us: I'll let you turn back the clock on race, civil liberties, and keeping "fags" in the closet, if we can have our fucking livelihoods back. Gone are big box stores, incremental margin increases at the expense of poverty-level America, and cheap fucking Made in Chinese sweatshop shit that breaks within two and a half minutes of opening. Making a comeback are Mom and Pop, quality over the bottom line, some sort of minimum level of actual democratization of the marketplace and, oh yeah... daisies.

''So few,'' [Justice Stephen] Breyer said, ''have so quickly changed so much.''

And yet, even as things change, for oh so many, they still remain the same. Dalek humps into my headphones this morning:

Six hundred years, ain't a fucking thing different.

And it's beyond-words fitting a message for this dark day, so close to the Fourth of July. Quick, somebody ask that cunt Peggy Noonan if this means it's dusk in America.

While you're at it then, too, ask the record companies how well the market polices itself. As the remains of their dank business model whisper in mildewed tatters, do you think for even a second Sony might consider anything other than raising CD prices in a desperate attempt to bleed dry the six remaining record-buyers left in the world? Maybe EMI can find 8-year-old Chinese musicians to become their new "artists" and Yousendit their songs straight to the nearest Best Buy for covering in a high-gloss photo of a slutty, half-clothed, anonymous preteen clone, for your instant consumption. And when that doesn't work, whatever handful of customers remain after having died of toxic toothpaste, unsafe steel-belted radials, and tainted petfood tainted chicken, will finally get the pleasure of a $5 album and nickel-a-song downloads for life!