Sheldon Adelson’s Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

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Pro Publica and PBS’s Frontline are out today with a joint blockbuster report on suspected corrupt dealings that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson–the largest donor to pro-Republican and pro-Mitt Romney Super Pacs–may have engaged in to get his largest gambling parlor built, in the Chinese territory of Macau. An executive and a senior attorney in Adelson’s company warned against trying to unduly influence the decisions of a Chinese government official with large payments, but according to the story, more than $700,000 was paid to the official anyway. Now, Adelson and his company are under investigation by the Justice Dept. and the SEC for possible violations of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). I heard reports about the Pro Publica/Frontline scoop on “All Things Considered,” with Lowell Bergman, one of three reporters on the piece, the others being Matt Isaacs, and Stephen Engelberg. On The Rachel Maddow Show, Engelberg was a guest.

But that strong dose of traditional investigative reporting is the least of what is about to hit Mr. Adelson, not by a longshot: The irrepressible Sarah Silverman has prepared some new comedic and political mischief for her co-religionist Sheldon Adelson. According to TechPresident’s Nick Judd, in a piece headlined, “Sarah Silverman Uses YouTube, Bikini Bottoms to Kickstart an Online Anti-Adelson Campaign“

“Sometime in the next two or three days, an ankles-in-the-air Sarah Silverman will probably appear in your Facebook news feed with a political stunt video designed to hijack the 21st-century media cycle as we now understand it. If casino mogul Sheldon Adelson would just stop giving money to super PACs supporting Mitt Romney’s candidacy, she says in a new video, she will put on bikini underwear and perform a sex act with him that is so far out of its normal context—the video hypes it up with the tagline “traditional lesbian sex”—as to make it almost-but-not-quite acceptable to describe to a family audience.”

For those who recall Silverman’s 2008 campaign video, “The Great Schlep,” this latest effort promises to inject a welcome hit of serious humor in to the presidential campaign. I can’t imagine that Pro Publica/Frontline and Sarah Silverman coordinated their efforts, but I bet they couldn’t be happier with the coincidence of their two efforts coming out within days of each other. Regarding Adelson’s free-spending efforts to elect Mitt Romney, it must be said that a Romney victory in November would probably spell be the end of the investigations and possible prosecution of wrongdoing at Adelson’s company. That’s quite a way to potentially buy yourself a stay-out-of-jail card–by yourself a new president and a new justice department. For all her bawdy humor, Silverman is clearly trying to influence the public discussion over this, as the website for her effort, http://scissorsheldon.com/, also includes a page headlined, Who is the $100 Million Man?

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Library Voices, Kicking it up in Quebec City

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I love the music of Canadian power pop septet Library Voices, and in the past year have twice had the pleasure of hearing them play live. The first time was last November when they played the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn with the six-piece outfit Ohbijou*, a show I wrote about in the early weeks of this blog. The second time was this past April when they played Pianos on the Lower East Side with Yukon Blonde, when the photos accompanying this post were shot.

Library Voices play their power pop with an exuberant intensity that I’ve found a great joy to take in. In my post last fall, I wrote they have “a brash, fun sound with vibrant catchy hooks, bookish song titles and literary-minded lyrics by synth player Mike Dawson (‘Reluctant Readers Make Reluctant Lovers,’ ‘If Raymond Carver Were Born in the 90s,’ ‘Prime Minister’s Daughter’), and a very athletic performing style.” Among the foremost of the athletes on stage is bassist Eoin Hickey-Cameron, a big man with a great personality who in a photo shown here utterly dwarfs me! Eoin jumps in place while playing his instrument, which he does with great abandon. It is for good reason that Library Voices got a lot of votes in last year’s CBC Radio 3 Bucky Awards in the “Best Live Band” category, including mine.

I was delighted to read today that over the past weekend Library Voices played a festival in Quebec City, far from their prairie base in Regina, Saskatchewan. And, according to Mark Teo of Exclaim magazine, the show they played at the Festival d’été was one for the ages. Teo writes their “eager energy — more befitting of a hardcore act — translated into scintillating pop, converting ‘If Raymond Carver Were Born in the ’90s’ and ‘Generation Handclap’ into insta-memorable shout-alongs. And when they closed with the Misfits’ ‘Where Eagles Dare,’ it became official: Library Voices owned the funnest set of the Festival d’été.” About Eoin, he adds, “Bassist Eoin Hickey-Cameron pogoed as if he were in Youth of Today.” Teo’s terrific review is only a few paragraphs, and really worth reading at this link.

* Ohbijou is a great band too. In my post last November, I described them as playing a kind of “space jam with soaring notes and lyrical interludes with great vocals by sisters Casey and Jenny Mecija, who also play guitar and violin respectively.” In the last photo in the gallery along with this post, I’m pictured with Jenny, who happens to be Eoin Hickey-Cameron’s girlfriend.

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