|
Posted on 08.23.10 by Danny Glover @ 10:58 pm
Earlier this year, I earned my 15 seconds of fame in the international spotlight when BBC interviewed me about the meaning of the word redneck. I owe it all to comedian Robin Williams, whose jab at Australia as the home of English rednecks triggered an Australian attack on Alabama. Now Williams is set to tour Australia, and he wants to make sure the Aussies and everyone else involved knows he was just doing his job — telling jokes and making people laugh. “That was pretty bizarre. I was like: ‘Wow! I’ve started an international incident! I don’t want to cause a war between Alabama and Australia — please no!’” Filed under: Entertainment and Hatin' On Rednecks and Just For Laughs and Redneck Humor and Rednecks Comments: None |
|
Posted on 08.13.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:19 pm
I have no particular reason for posting this video other than the obvious — it’s a tiger riding a horse! You just don’t see that every day, so enjoy seeing it today on this blog: Filed under: Entertainment and Human Interest and Video and Wildlife Comments: None |
|
Posted on 07.12.10 by Danny Glover @ 9:54 pm
Sheer genius. I wish our minivan had a DVD player just so I could play this video repeatedly on our next road trip when one of the kids “breaks wind” and forces us to roll down the windows for fresh air. It’s the only sure-fire way to get me to stop so the culprit can take a bathroom break. Filed under: Entertainment and Family and Just For Laughs and Music and Redneck Humor and Video Comments: None |
|
Posted on 07.09.10 by Danny Glover @ 7:31 am
Only bits and pieces of this video (and the lyrics) resemble my “Dad Life” — there’s not a laptop, recliner or iPhone to be found — but I like it anyway. I do know this: I’d like to have a yard big enough to justify buying an awesome riding mower like the one in the video. I hate cutting the grass with my puttering push mower, but if I had a sweet, more-power ride like that, I’d be all into manicuring my “man-scape.” Filed under: Entertainment and Just For Laughs and Parenting and Video Comments: None |
|
Posted on 07.07.10 by Danny Glover @ 11:22 pm
We want our children to get an education without being subjected to all the stressful and counterproductive pressures of a system created by the government and run by bureaucrats. Watch the trailer for the documentary “Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture” for a glimpse of what formal education has become: To be fair, part of me wonders, after watching the video, whether the bigger problem is that we have reared a generation of whiny kids who cry “Woe is me!” because they have to do homework to get ahead. But I also think this is a valid point:
Teaching done right will make children love to learn, and loving parents focused on educating just a few children can do the job better than most “trained” teachers in today’s schools. (Read previous “Why We Home-School” lessons.) Filed under: Entertainment and News & Politics and Parenting and Video and Why We Home-School Comments: None |
|
Posted on 06.26.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:23 pm
Country musicians have a twisted knack for making violence seem amusing. The latest entry in this niche music genre is the song “Pray For You,” by Jaron and the Long Road to Love. Here are the deadly wishes for a wife scorned from the chorus alone: “I pray your brakes go out runnin’ down a hill. I pray a flowerpot falls from a window sill and knocks you in the head like I’d like to. I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls. I pray you’re flyin’ high when your engine stalls. I pray all your dreams never come true. Just know wherever you are, honey, I pray for you.” I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but smile, especially when I watch the video. I unsuccessfully fought the same urge — being entertained by violent, sometimes deadly fantasies set to catchy music rather than offended by them — when The Dixie Chicks released “Goodbye Earl” and when Carrie Underwood’s tune “Before He Cheats” rose to the top of the charts. The latter is still one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite singers. Enjoy these online encore performances: Filed under: Entertainment and Just For Laughs and Music and Redneck Music and Video Comments: 1 Comment |
|
Posted on 06.23.10 by Danny Glover @ 8:01 pm
It wasn’t long ago, maybe six months, that I incessantly teased my wife for playing Farmville on Facebook. The game looked lame. Who wants to waste time plowing digitally, planting and harvesting virtual crops, and collecting electronic feathers from chickens and milk from cows? Then, amidst the tedious hours of unemployment, I started playing Farmville because I had way too much time to waste. I was hooked, even worse than my wife (and our young children, who began playing the role of hired farm hands when Mommy grew bored with the game). I’ve been gainfully employed for several months now, and I’m still playing Farmville! My addiction is so strong that my wife has been feeding it by buying new Farmville goodies at 7-Eleven, including this Super Big Gulp cup that won me a pool-diving cow for my farm: Fortunately, my boss, David All, is a big believer in the potential of social gaming to boost corporate and political brands. PR Week recently published his essay on the subject, and I am now one of the team members at the David All Group brainstorming ways to use social gaming as a promotional tool. So Farmville is now both work and entertainment. It’s a sweet assignment. Filed under: Business and Culture and Entertainment and Technology Comments: None |
|
Posted on 04.16.10 by Danny Glover @ 2:21 pm
Like most of America’s official recognitions of God, the National Day of Prayer now at the center of a legal dispute is rooted in the spiritual heyday of the post-World War II era. The day was first celebrated in 1952. I revisited the history of such “ceremonial deism” (the Supreme Court’s term) in my 1999 “Congress Back Then” column for IntellectualCapital.com, and I am reprinting it here to offer some context for the current debate about the National Day of Prayer. Congress Back Then: America’s Spiritual Heyday Earlier this year, policymakers, pundits and people on the street reopened a uniquely American (and seemingly infinite) debate. In the wake of another incident of school violence, this time a mass murder at a high school in Littleton, Colo., they pondered a familiar question: Just how far should our nation go in trying to maintain a clear separation between church and state? Congress debated the question in mid-June and decided that perhaps we had gone too far. More specifically, House lawmakers saw a need for a greater religious presence in the public schools, so they cast a series of votes designed to give new spiritual direction to the nation’s youth. The most-publicized decision: They sanctioned the posting of the Bible’s Ten Commandments on school walls. The primarily symbolic votes topped the news of the week, not at all surprising in an era when Americans are sharply divided on the relationship between religion and government. But four decades back, the votes might have gone unnoticed, an unremarkable act at a time when Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and made the phrase “In God We Trust” the national motto and a mandatory slogan on all U.S. coins and currency. All of that religious posturing, and more, happened during the presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and in the early days of a Cold War that most patriotic Americans apparently saw as a battle between Christian America and the godless, communist Soviet Union. Filed under: Books and Culture and Entertainment and History and News & Politics and People and Religion Comments: None |
|
Posted on 04.08.10 by Danny Glover @ 1:06 am
John King of CNN asked Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who once held the post Steele now does at the Republican National Committee, whether Steele is held to a “different standard” because of the color of his skin. Barbour answered by reminding King of his own political handicap:
Ain’t that the truth! Oops, I forgot I ain’t s’posed to say “ain’t.” They taught us that in the Redneck School of Higher Standards. Filed under: Entertainment and News & Politics and People and Rednecks Comments: None |
|
Posted on 04.07.10 by Danny Glover @ 11:53 pm
You might be an enlightened redneck … if you appreciate a parody song that meshes the music of country legend Kenny Rogers with the political messaging of the tea party movement. Filed under: Entertainment and News & Politics and Redneck Music and Video Comments: 4 Comments |
|
Posted on 04.05.10 by Danny Glover @ 7:04 am
American comedian Robin Williams sparked an international redneck incident last week, and BBC called little ol’ me to help set the world straight on all this fuss about rednecks. First the back story: In a March 30 appearance on David Letterman’s show, Williams mocked Australians as “English rednecks.” “You down there, ‘How are ya? Good to see you. Hello.’” he said in his worst Aussie accent. “I realized that if Darwin had landed in Australia, he would have gone: ‘I’m wrong.’” The jab didn’t set well with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who threw the redneck charge back at America. “I think Robin Williams should go and spend a bit of time in Alabama before he frames comments about anyone being particularly redneck,” he said in a radio interview. At that point, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley entered the rhetorical fray. “I’m not sure if Prime Minister Rudd has ever been to Alabama. If he has, he would know that Alabamians are decent, hard-working, creative people.” Here’s where I enter the picture: The back-and-forth over who is and isn’t a redneck caught the attention of BBC, and someone there found this Web site. Last Thursday, Alex Last of “The World Today” sent me this e-mail:
The next day BBC’s Leila Touwen recorded a telephone interview with me, and my “expert” insights into the state of being redneck aired yesterday. You can listen to BBC’s redneck segment here, starting at about the 20-minute, 40-second mark, but here’s what I told the British broadcaster: Filed under: Entertainment and Hatin' On Rednecks and News & Politics and People and Rednecks and Video Comments: 53 Comments |
|
Posted on 04.03.10 by Danny Glover @ 7:45 pm
Rednecks are “the wrong kind of white people.” That’s why the “right kind” of white people — the elitists who look down their noses at rednecks — are trying their hardest to marginalize tea partiers as racist, extremist, downright scary people:
Even a congressman who himself was unfairly attacked as a racist on the campaign trail played the race-baiting, tea-party-bashing game this week: Filed under: Culture and Entertainment and Hatin' On Rednecks and Media and News & Politics and People and Video Comments: None |
|
Posted on 03.26.10 by Danny Glover @ 11:01 pm
This is going viral on Facebook. I don’t know who wrote it, but it captures the spirit of a solid majority of the country not only this week but for more than a year:
I have to say that as a writer, I would hate it if I wrote something that clever and it traveled all over the Internet without my name on it. This is what reminded me of the “The Bill Of No Rights” more than a decade after I unraveled that Internet copyright mystery. Filed under: Entertainment and Government and Health and News & Politics and Technology Comments: 5 Comments |
|
Posted on 03.11.10 by Danny Glover @ 1:37 pm
In my new role as the editorial director of Digital Society, I’ve been focused like a laser on high-speed Internet the past few weeks. The FCC will be releasing its national broadband plan in six days, so leaders of the commission have been making the rounds on the speaking circuit to promote pieces of the plan. The central message of the plan is that all Americans need broadband access — Commissioner Michael Copps this week even joined the chorus of people proclaiming it as a “right” — so the government must take steps to ensure that the poor, minorities, the elderly and, yes, rednecks in rural areas are enlightened by the Internet. The FCC is so committed to selling its plan that Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke to the Country Music Association’s board of directors at its meeting in Washington yesterday. Of course, country bumpkins are way too backward to understand the high-tech lingo of the FCC, so Genachowski’s staff translated his speech into “Nashvillese” that features country music titles:
Don’t you feel so much more enlightened about broadband now? Filed under: Entertainment and Government and Music and News & Politics and Redneck Humor and Redneck Music and Rednecks and Technology Comments: None |
|
Posted on 02.21.10 by Danny Glover @ 1:18 pm
I still remember the strip that hooked me as a Calvin fan for life. Calvin burped, prompting the typical adult reply from his mother: “Calvin! What do we say after that?” Here’s how the conversation went next:
Classic! Calvin was a redneck through and through. So was his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who came to life in Calvin’s imagination and the strip. But their creator is an enlightened redneck.
I sure do miss Watterson’s work, which ran for only a decade. So do millions of other fans. Filed under: Books and Entertainment and Human Interest and Just For Laughs and Media and People and Redneck Humor Comments: None |
| « newer posts | previous posts » |






