Mount Holyoke College prof Douglas J. Amy insists that “Government is Good,” and has a whole detailed site all about why.

Cenk Uygur, meanwhile, explores the other side of this ideological divide, and decides today’s big business power-grabbers aren’t interested in democracy or even capitalism; but that’s only to be expected from “corporatists.”

Political PR maven Jonah Sachs insists progressives have gotta stop being so damned rational. He argues that public opinion in this country isn’t swayed by analytical arguments but by emotional appeals.

Guess who uses social-media sites the most? That long-neglected demographic caste, the stay-home moms.

Paul Krugman wrote it weeks ago, but I’m still trying to get to the end of his long essay asking the musical question, How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? The answer to his query’s easy, really. Economics is either the most or second-most fraudulant “science” out there (competing with sociology). Economic theory has less to do with the world most of us live in and more in common with the virtual worlds created by or for role-playing gamers

Henry Gibson, who passed away Monday, had a long and solid acting career ranging from Nashville to Magnolia and Boston Legal. But he’ll always be known as “the Poet” on the original Laugh-In. Gibson was a prime example of that show’s basic premise. Laugh-In was suit-and-tie guys (what we’d now call the Mad Men generation) looking gently askew at Those Darned Hippies. Saturday Night Live, by contrast, WAS Those Darned Hippies.

At least Gibson died without the tragic career footnote faced by Peter, Paul and Mary co-singer Mary Travers. She faced her cancer-ridden final months with the indignity of having one of her group’s hit songs reworked into the unauthorized political hatched-job “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Some clever publishers, with permission of the bands being referenced, are putting out an Indie Rock Coloring Book. (I know, some of you snarkers would color all the pages pale, white, or the colors of dingy discount sneakers.)

One of his former lawyers says it just might have been the same thing that did in his first wife’s dad.

The ultimate tabloid celebrity was also the ultimate mess of contradictions, as you’ve long known. He was a devout student of classic R&B who had a series of nose and chin reconstructions, straightened his hair, and wore whiteface makeup on and off stage. He was a self-made sex symbol whose mark of “toughness” was to shriek in an attempt to reach the high notes of his early fame. He was a creator of effortless-sounding music whose life was rife with chaos, drug/alcohol abuse, and music-industry sycophants. He was a beloved entertainer who was accused of some of the most heinous crimes. He’d attained unlimited wealth (or the closest thing to that any African-American man has ever had), then spent the last third of his life scrambling to avoid total financial collapse.

In all the TV, radio, and online chatter in the first hours since his demise, I’ve been reading and hearing the wildest tales. Given what we know about his life, even the wildest of these rumors seem believable, whether or not they’re true.

My favorite quotation about Jackson came in a Facebook message from ex-Seattle semiotician Steven Shaviro: “MJ, in his musical genius and in his sad racial and sexual confusions, epitomized American civilization more than anybody else ever did.”

…and best wishes to top local music producer Conrad Uno (Young Fresh Fellows, PUSA, and more). He and his lovely bride Emily Bishton renewed their wedding vows at Safeco Field on Sunday. The here-linked Seattle Times article mentions almost nothing about Uno’s musical career.

…today to Bob Bogle, Ventures founding guitarist and NW rock legend. His band got into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame just last year. His distinctively crisp, cool instrumental sound is eternal.

Thanks to iTunes’ automatic search for album-cover art, I woke up this morning to find this image now attached to the brassy 1959 instrumental hit “Manhattan Spiritual.” I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Sad relic of a Mad Men past we’re glad to be over.” Since this is the No-Comment Dept., I’ll let your thoughts carry the day.

Back in the days of vinyl and even beyond, the University District was the record-store capitol of the region. That’s where such once-mighty industry players as Budget Tapes & Records, Discount Records, Tower, Peaches, and The Wherehouse all purveyed the big (later little) plastic discs bearing assorted types of beautiful noise.

That era ends this month. That’s when the District’s last specialty new music store, Cellophane Square, gives up the good fight it’s fought since 1972.

At its original location on NE 42nd, and later in more spacious digs on upper University Way, Cellophane Square was a lot more than a retailer. It was a community center, a hangout, an information exchange.

This was particularly true during the 1979-91 era of the punk underground, when Seattle’s civic cultural establishment sneered at any musical act younger or flashier than the Eagles. Cellophane Square was where we learned which bands were touring, which bands were breaking up, and which bands needed a new drummer. It was where we got the domestic zines and the UK music mags. It was where we got those oh-so-rare (even then!) import-only releases by American bands.

There will still be a few new CDs at the University Book Store, and a lot of used discs at 2nd Time Around. But the scene just won’t be the same.

…what the odd temporary readerboard sign for a Hal Ashby film festival was doing up outside the Showbox one day last week, we now know. It was part of a Target TV commercial with Pearl Jam. Really.

…Beat poet, punk pioneer, social activist, and White Stripes mother-in-law.

I took a bunch of pictures. Twelve of them, with quasi-philosophical captions, are now up at Seattle PostGlobe.

I hope to create more of these slice-O-life photo pieces for PostGlobe. If you like this, you could consider a donation to that fledgling nonprofit news site.

…but retired from all public life? Ex-Seattleite cartoonist Ward Sutton ponders the possibilities.

Yr. humble scribe attended two private events in Belltown on Tuesday.

In the morning, the Escala condo project (Seattle’s last still-under-construction residential highrise) held a “topping off” ceremony on its roof, 31 floors above Fourth Avenue. A city official was there to praise the project as a key component in Mayor Nickels’s “center city strategy.” (Since when did we start calling our downtown “center city” anyway? Sounds like Norm Rice’s failed attempt to rebrand the waterfront as a “harborfront.”)

The ceremony was followed by a champagne toast down in the project’s sales office nearby. Two scale models of the finished building showed it as a shining beacon of quality living. A chart on one wall listed one third of the project’s 270-some units as sold. Another third are currently available. The rest are on hold, withdrawn from the market pending an upturn in conditions.

The second big event came that evening at the Crocodile. It was an invite-only bash honoring the 50th birthday of Kim Warnick, the legendary Fastbacks/Visqueen singer-bassist. The joint was packed with folks who’ve loved Warnick and her work. An all-star lineup of Seattle musicians paid tribute to her on stage.

Here’s the climactic moment of the evening, with Warnick joining in with her ol’ band members Kurt Bloch, Lulu Gargiulo, and Mike Musburger.

And here are more musical moments from the evening.

The contrast between that scene and the Escala fete reminded me of what Jonathan Raban said about NYC as a city of “street people” and “sky people.”

In his definition, “street people” weren’t just those who lived ON the streets but also those who walk and converse and meet friends on the sidewalks, who live in the street-level milieu of bars and shops and cafes.

The “sky people” of NY are those for whom, as Fran Lebowitz described it, “outside” is what’s in between the building you’re in and the building you’re going to. Sky people live in the rarified air of high rises, have household staffs to shop for them, and socialize at private clubs and exclusive bistros. The Escala will have a private club, the first new one in town in 20 years (I believe since the Columbia Tower Club).

Times have been tough for street-level citizens for several years.

Now, they’re becoming tough for sky people as well.

The thing is, we who live close to the ground know how to survive. And to have a helluva good time while doing so.

…to jump on the grunge-nostalgia bandwagon with a fabricated feature entitled “Soundgarden Inadvertently Reunites at Area Cinnabon.”

The piece’s author and editors might not have known there really was a Soundgarden partial reunion last week at the new Crocodile. Only instead of Chris Cornell (ex-hubby of one of the new Croc’s co-owners), who splits his time these days between Paris and Hollywood, the lead vocal role was assumed by the still charismatic-as-all-hell Tad Doyle.

…and partly answers, the musical question: “Grunge Bands: Where Are They Now?”