If you're a male of a certain age, you know Ronnie James Dio - singer with Elf, Rainbow, post-Ozzy Black Sabbath and his own band, Dio.
He died yesterday at the age of 67.
The news wasn't a complete surprise, unfortunately. He had been very sick with stomach cancer (he looked very frail in recent photos) and the summer tour of Heaven and Hell - the post-Ozzy Sabbath renamed to keep Sharon Osbourne from suing them - was canceled back on May 4th because Dio was too sick to perform.
Still, the news made me feel a little sad when I heard. I pulled out the old Sabbath cds - Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules - and the Rainbow cd Rainbow Rising last night and played them really loud to bring back the feeling I had first listening to them as a 13 year old. I started looking at the websites, seeing other people reminisce about the 70's and 80's music scene, about Ronnie's passing, about the man's career (he actually started in a doo wop band in the late 50's!!!)
As I was taking an hour or so to roll down memory lane, what do I come across on one of the music websites about Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne but an ad for "keepteachersgreat.org."
Not kidding - on a site about Ozzy rereleasing his first two solo albums with the original rhythm section restored (another Sharon Osbourse/lawyer special), there is this ad that says "Petition the UFT - get rid of bad teachers."
On a site about music - specifically 80's heavy metal music.
Tell me, why are the hedge funders/charter school scumbags putting an anti-teacher ad there?
Seriously.
Every newspaper, major blog on right and left and the MSN homepage wasn't enough?
I love how the hedge funders/charter school scumbags like to play like they're the underdogs against the big bad all-powerful teachers unions.
Meanwhile they have quite literally blanketed the web with these ads - from the Times to Huffingtonpost to a music site about heavy metal.
They're like Bloomberg back in the last election -so much money to burn, they can literally send out a mailing a day to everybody in the world.
The question I have is, what kind of democracy do we have when a small contingent of the richest people on earth can run a very expensive ad campaign to demonize unionized teachers everywhere on the web for as long and as frequent as they want?
I guess it's the same kind of democracy that calls capping oil company profits socialism but caps the liability they have for the worst oil spill in the history of mankind of $75 million.
It's the best democracy money can buy - for the rich and the powerful and the connected.
For everybody else, it's the shaft.
As Ronnie James Dio wrote all those years ago "If you listen to fools, the mob rules..."
Surely that is true these days.
Rest In Peace, Ronnie.
found the same ad on the Jerusalem Post Website. They are indeed scumbags.
ReplyDeleteWow - who exactly do they want to convince in Jerusalem about the UFT?
ReplyDeleteAmazing. Money to burn.
That's the problem.
Perhaps we ought to take some of that money from them forcibly.
You may have gotten that ad because of websites that you previously visited.
ReplyDeleteClear your cookies, then revisit the site to see if it is still there
Good point, anon. I'll try that later. Nonetheless, the point still stands - they have blanketed the "news" part of the Internets with the ads.
ReplyDeleteToo much money to spend, stupid stuff to spend it on.
Bet we could save a couple of layoffs if taxes were raised on these "non-profit" groups.