Episode 66: Something Happened

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(This episode is the introduction to the series The Powell Movement.)

Ah, formative moments! Those instances of circumstance that try the soul into reconsideration! In this Episode 66: Something Happened, I look into the before and after life of one of the most influential people in American history, and give due weight to the confluence of circumstance that drove him to his own formative moment.

On this episode you hear quite a bit of me reading from Robert W. McChesney and John Nichol's Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America (Nation Books, 2013), and a bit from Jane Mayer's Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Random House, 2016). You'll hear more from both of those books in future episodes, I can assure you. I play oral arguments and decision excerpts from the Supreme Court's Buckley v. Valeo case, and Justice John Paul Stevens' oral summation of dissent from 2010's Citizens United, Not Timid*, backed by KMFDM.

Musically, I play a bunch of tunes from Podington Bear’s album Yearning, first "Delphi," then "Clouds Pass Softly Deux," then "Small Bummer," and finally "Rarified." I close the show with Mistle Thrush. There were also more than a few cigarette commercial jingles I found addictive enough to play, but I felt it would be unfair to the makers of this shit to simply play it, er, straight.

*Seriously, if more people insisted on noting the original title for the Hillary Clinton attack group made famous by the decision that bears its name, fewer, I think, would give the group the credence they hardly deserve.