Bite-Sized Reading

Republicans continue their long string of stealing from artists who would want nothing to do with them. The Department of Homeland Security used Woodie Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" in a video..

When CNN contacted them to ask if they were aware of the song's radical origins, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a reply that read, in part, "Loving America may be a radical or foreign concept for CNN, in fact we’re quite confident it is," which can be interpreted two possible ways:

1. McLaughlin is unaware of the song's radical origins, and your run-of-the-mill MAGAt being also unaware, will eat this up.
2. McLaughlin is aware of the song's radical origins, but is counting on your run-of-the-mill MAGAt being unaware, in which case they'll eat this up.

Since there's no possible option in which your run-of-the-mill MAGAt is aware of the song's origins, she scores points with the MAGA base either way. Which is why I think it's important that people who actually do have two brain cells to rub together know the full lyrics of the song.

Most people just know the first two verses:

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

The next two verses continue in much the same vein:

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

And then it turns into a protest song:

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Either I don't understand how ebooks work, or else Yale University Press doesn't understand how ebooks work: Today, Yale University Press released Manga: A New History of Japanese Comics by Eike Exner. As you can see in the screenshot below from the Yale University Press website, the ebook version is, and I quote, "Out of Stock" on the day of release.

It seems to me that ebooks should never be out of stock, especially not on the day of release! And I'm sure that by "Out of Stock" they actually mean something like "not ready for sale" or "not available for purchase from this website," but even if that's what they mean, that's not what they said, and saying what they said makes them look stupid.

It makes me proud of high school me, because instead of choosing not to go to Yale because he couldn't afford it, he chose not to go to MIT because he couldn't afford it. 😉

ETA: You can also see in the screenshot I posted that the paper book and the ebook are the same price, which is a whole other thing that I'm not going to bother posting about again, except to say that I hate how the price relationship between paper books and ebooks is completely arbitrary. I'm sure that it's manipulated in whatever way is most profitable for the publisher, and I'm quite confident that it never (intentionally) benefits the author, no matter which way the publisher cooks the books. (pun intended)