You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (534)

PLAYS: (1954)

Glenn Beck hosted one of his hourlong sessions before a studio audience talking about the role of heroes in American life. The consensus, both by Beck and his panelists, was that Americans no longer look up to their historic heroes the way they should. Instead, as Beck suggested, we have "Mao Tse Tung hanging in our White House."

Say again? Oh yeah -- the Obama administration is riddled with radical Marxist revolutionaries. Right. Tell that to progressives right now. Moron.

Anyway, Beck apparently draws the line when it comes to the possibility, heaven forfend, Obama might be regarded as a hero:

Beck: I'm a big visual guy. And if you look at the way Barack Obama was imaged -- he was, as a savior. He was, as a -- you look at it now, anybody notice -- you watch the newspaper, and you watch the photos of him coming out of the White House, almost always, they'll have a shot of him with the seal of the President -- you notice that? And it almost looks like a halo. They'll take a shot from the side, and he's standing there, and it looks like a Russian icon!

He's talking about the photos of the president that have been shot for some time now whenever there's a press appearance at the White House. And it didn't start with Obama:

Indeed, if we're suddenly all worried about presidents being made out to be heroes, you have to wonder where Beck was when W. strutted out to his "Mission Accomplished" photo-op:

Now that's what I call an action hero.

Fortunately, Obama has spared us any codpiece appearances.

We've lost healthcare reform's biggest hero, and it's only fitting that HR3200, the healthcare reform bill, bear his name.

Progressive Change has started a petition asking Congress to honor Ted Kennedy's memory.

In just a few hours, they've collected over 10,000 signatures. You can add yours here.

For many members of Congress, it may be the inspiration they need to get this done.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 151

PLAYS: 42

(Jean Shepherd - Occupation: Cheerful Chaos Merchant)

Living on the West Coast, I didn't have the opportunity of experiencing Jean Shepherd as so many in New York did. I got it by way of rumor, his album on Elektra and his syndicated radio show that periodically ran on KPFK. I heard he was good friends with a lot of the Beat Generation poets, and growing up with a well-thumbed copy of "A Coney Island Of The Mind" in my high school notebook, anyone who was anywhere near that scene had to be a hero of mine.

Years later, I ran across a collection of tapes which featured his live shows and a bunch of his studio shows from the early 60's, which this is one.

Shepherd is pretty much known today as the guy who wrote "A Christmas Story". And even though it's achieved a kind of "classic Americana" status - it doesn't really explain who Shepherd was and why he was so loved by everyone who heard him. His was a skewed vision of the world, often darkly humorous and completely iconoclastic.

To a 16 year old mind, he was just what the doctor ordered.

There's a fascinating piece at NYT today about classical musicians in Palestine.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The shy Palestinian teenager raised her flute and dispatched the courtly melodies and cascading runs of an 18th-century concerto with surprising self-assurance.

Over just three years of study the flute had become a near obsession for Dalia Moukarker, 16. She was practicing so hard — sometimes retreating to a bathroom in her crowded apartment, sometimes skipping meals — that her wrist filled with pain, limiting her to two hours a day. But in a classroom here recently, the discomfort was nowhere to be seen. For she had earned an almost surreal reward: a master class with her hero, Emmanuel Pahud, a major international soloist.

Young musicians in unfriendly circumstances have always found music to be both a way out and a sanctuary within, and Moukarker's is no exception to the familiar pattern. Hopefully the NYT will follow this up in a few months with an update.