Death to Dumblr Staff

TheArtOfTheMask

#1, #2, #3, #5

taken in 1966 by Ronald Schermer for LIFE Magazine, found in the UMass Amherst Digital Archives

On July 11, 1958, police burst into the bedroom where Mildred and Richard Loving slept and charged them with violating Virginia's Racial Integrity Act in 1964. The couple were sentenced to a year in jail, each, unless they left Virginia permanently. Exiled from their home and family, they challenged the law in court. In 1967, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that anti-miscegenation laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and interracial marriage became legal nationwide.

ℍ𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕪 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝔻𝕒𝕪 ❣️

Here’s a snippet of the last song we performed at our recent show in Laguna Beach, CA: Irving Berlin’s 1941 tune, “When That Man Is Dead and Gone” which he wrote about Hitler. As many of you already know, an older recording we did of that song has gone viral this year (with over 3 million views between YouTube and Instagram!)

Now to be clear, this song was written over 80 years ago about Hitler. We have never altered even a single lyric. And yet, millions of people assume this song is about a certain other man.

As I said, this show was in Laguna Beach - which (for those of you who are unfamiliar with California politics) - is located in Orange County, a very republican area. For that reason, we wrestled with whether or not to perform this song. As an artist it’s always tricky to gauge how to interact with an audience while staying true to your art. When we introduced the song…the audience was dead silent, I mean crickets, which made us immediately worry that it was not going to be well received. But we refuse to live in a world where it is too controversial to dance on Hitler’s grave…so we went for it!

The response…was one of the most effusive responses we’ve ever had to that song by an audience! We got a standing ovation before the song was even over!!

Hope you dig this version!

To see us live: https://lizzyandthetriggermen.com

To join our mailing list email: [email protected]

Musicians:

Nate Ketner (Musical Director/Alto Sax)

Jim Jedeikin (Clarinet)

Harry Ostrander (Trumpet)

Abdullah Ebrahim (Trombone)

Anthony Ty Johnson (Drums)

Sam Rocha (Bass)

Chris Dawson (Piano)

Connor Vance (Violin)

Luca Pino (Guitar)

Lyrics:

When that man is dead and gone

When that man is dead and gone

We'll go dancing down the street

Kissing everyone we meet

When that man is dead and gone 

What a day to wake up on

What a way to greet the dawn

Some fine day the news will flash

Satan with a small moustache

Is asleep beneath the lawn

When that man is dead and gone

Satan, Satan,

Ha, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho

Thought up a plan

Dressed as a man

Walking the earth and since he began

The world is hell for you and me

But what a heaven it will be

When that man is dead and gone

When that man is dead and gone

When they lay him twelve feet deep

I'll be there to laugh, not weep

When that man is dead and gone 

What a day to wake up on

What a way to greet the dawn

Satan willl take him by the hand

To meet old Gerring, look what, man

When that man is dead and gone

When that man is dead and gone

Some fine day the news will flash

Satan with a small moustache

Is asleep beneath the lawn

When that man is dead and gone

What a day to wake up on

What a way to greet the dawn

When a certain man is dead and gone

Al Bowlly last recorded song, made two weeks before his death, a duet with Jimmy Mesene of Irving Berlin's satirical song on Hitler.

Sometimes I provide you with information that I hope you’ll find helpful in making arguments with others. I don’t expect that what I share with you will change the minds of committed Trumpers, but the facts and the evidence may have some sway with Republicans and independents who are wavering about whom to support in the midterms. 

One of the main reasons Trump was elected was his pledge to keep the United States out of wars, especially the kind of “endless” wars America has fought in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Obviously, he broke that pledge. We’re now well into the fourth month of a war he said would be four or five weeks at most. 

In addition, the war he initiated in Iran was a war of choice — Iran did not attack the United States, and most specialists in foreign policy say Iran was not close to devising a nuclear weapon at that time. (It’s likely to be closer now, or at least more committed to making one.)

Yet in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which aired Sunday, Trump was once again trying to rewrite his own history, He claimed:

“I didn’t guarantee no war. So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”

In fact, Trump repeatedly and unequivocally promised during the 2024 election campaign that the U.S. would not have any wars during his second presidency. 

Herewith, some examples.

In a June 2024 social media post, Trump described the election as “a choice between STRENGTH or WEAKNESS, COMPETENCE or INCOMPETENCE, peace and prosperity or war and no war.” 

In one of the highest-profile speeches of his campaign — his July 2024 address to the Republican National Convention — he said, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”

He made the promise again and even more directly during an August 2024 rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania, saying: “Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all.”

Trump reprised the same pledge in an August 2024 interview with Adin Ross, an online personality. After saying there were no wars during his first administration, he promised, “And we won’t have wars again.” 

At another rally that month in the hotly contested state of North Carolina, Trump approvingly cited Viktor Orbán, then the prime minister of Hungary, as supposedly having said, “Make sure that Trump gets reelected president, and you’re not going to have any more wars.” Trump reiterated moments later, “No more wars. No more disruptions. We will have prosperity, and we will have peace.”

Trump told versions of the Orbán story at numerous other events. For example, in the swing state of Wisconsin in October 2024, he said, “Viktor Orbán said, ‘If Trump comes back, you won’t have any wars. You won’t have any wars.’ And he’s about as tough as they get, and he said it loud and clear and he said why. But you won’t have any wars.”

Finally, in his victory address in November 2024, Trump made a clear promise that he would not start a war — even when he no longer had to persuade voters to elect him. He said in that high-profile speech: “Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. … They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”

In reality, of course, Trump has been one of the most bellicose presidents in modern American history. 

ya ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow!"

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, decided on June 12, 1967, in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously (9–0) struck down state antimiscegenation statutes in Virginia as unconstitutional under the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The case arose after Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a woman of mixed African American and Native American ancestry, traveled from their residences in Central Point, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., to be married on June 2, 1958. Having returned to Central Point, they lived in the home of Mildred’s parents while Richard, a construction worker, built a new house for the couple. In July 1958, police entered the Lovings’ bedroom in the early morning hours and arrested them for having violated the state’s ban on interracial marriage. At a hearing in a Virginia state court in January 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to having violated Section 20-58 of the Virginia state code, which prohibited a “white” person and a “colored” person from leaving the state to be married and returning to live as man and wife. Section 20-58 specified that punishment for violation of the law—confinement in the state penitentiary for one to five years—should be the same as that provided in Section 20-59, which prohibited marriage between “white” and “colored” persons. The term “white person” was defined in Section 20-54 as a person with “no other admixture of blood other than white and American Indian,” provided that the amount of Indian blood was one-sixteenth or less; the term “colored person” was defined in Section 1-14 as a person “in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood.” Sections 20-59 and 20-54 were derived from provisions of the state’s Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, adopted in 1924.

The judge sentenced the Lovings to one year in jail but suspended the sentence on the condition that the couple leave the state immediately and not return as man and wife for a period of 25 years. Having established residence in Washington, D.C., the Lovings filed suit in a Virginia state court in November 1963, seeking to overturn their convictions on the grounds that Sections 20-58 and 20-59 were inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. After the state court rejected the Lovings’ challenge, the case was accepted for review by Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals, which upheld the constitutionality of 20-58 and 20-59 but voided the sentences because the condition under which they were suspended was, in its view, “unreasonable.” Citing its earlier decision in Naim v. Naim (1965), the appeals court ruled that, despite the statutes’ use of racial classifications to define the criminal offenses in question, neither statute violated the guarantee of equal protection of the laws because the penalties they imposed applied equally to both “white” and “colored” persons. The Lovings then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on April 10, 1967.

Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren reversed the Lovings’ convictions. He first dismissed the Naim court’s reading of the equal protection clause, declaring that “we reject the notion that the mere ‘equal application’ of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment’s proscription of all invidious racial discriminations.” Accordingly, he rejected Virginia’s contention that the constitutionality of the statutes, given their presumptive compatibility with the equal protection clause, should depend solely on whether they served a rational purpose—a question best left to the wisdom of the state legislature, Virginia argued, in light of doubtful scientific evidence. To the contrary, Warren insisted, citing Korematsu v. United States (1944), “the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the ‘most rigid scrutiny’”—in contrast to the less-demanding “rational-basis” standard—“and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate.” Yet, he continued, “there is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification.”

Warren’s opinion was also notable for its affirmation of the freedom to marry as “‘one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival,” citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942). To deny this freedom “on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes,” Warren contended, would be “to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”