John Eskow

John Eskow

I'M A FAN OF THIS BLOGGER (get email alerts)

RSS
John Eskow is a writer and musician. He wrote or co-wrote the movies
Air America, The Mask of Zorro, and Pink Cadillac, as well as the novel
Smokestack Lightning. His work has appeared in Esquire, Rolling Stone,
The Nation, Playboy, and many other magazines. At a tender age, he
also edited and helped write Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture, the
autobiography of Abbie Hoffman. He has two children, Gena and James,
and is the brother of RJ Eskow. He currently lives in Los
Angeles. He can be reached at aeskow@aol.com

Blog Entries by John Eskow

Why Has John McCain Abandoned the American Soldier?

Posted May 11, 2008 | 07:23 PM (EST)


George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain are sending a razor-sharp message to the fighting men and women of America.

It's underlined again in bright, fresh, blood-red every time a tank in Bahgdad is blown up by an IED and shrapnel rips into another soldier's flesh.

It's written in script-letters...

Read Post

Flawed Messengers and Wooden Soldiers: Why Obama Beat Clinton -- and Why He'll Beat McCain, Too

64 Comments | Posted May 8, 2008 | 10:48 PM (EST)


After all the pontificating on TV, in the end it didn't come down to sideshow jive like the Reverend Wright Imbroglio or the Great Sniper Fire Lie. It didn't come down to micro-demographics, or gas prices, or the war in Iraq. Incredibly enough, it didn't even come down to the...

Read Post

Tuesday's Biggest Loser: Tim Russert (And All The Other TV Blowhards)

57 Comments | Posted May 7, 2008 | 05:56 PM (EST)


"Liberty is connected with prose, and bureaucrats who want to destroy liberty tend to write and speak badly." -George Orwell

George Orwell: meet Tim Russert.

And all his blowhard kin.

Tuesday's biggest winner was not Barack Obama -- though it's impossible to overstate just how stunning his victory was, scoring...

Read Post

A Desperate Hillary Promises New Crystal Meth That's "Actually Good For You"; Laughs Off "So-Called Experts" Who Disagree

2 Comments | Posted May 6, 2008 | 07:29 PM (EST)


Reeling from Tuesday evening's results, a desperate Hillary Clinton today promised voters an extraordinary new platform that, while making no mention of pressing political issues, includes "zero-calorie" Hershey Bars, a month's-worth of free Marlboro Reds, and--somewhat controversially, in certain quarters--a mysterious new kind of crystal methedrine, which while having all...

Read Post

Why We Fight, 2008: Against the War, Against a Culture of Fear, And For Barack Obama

29 Comments | Posted May 5, 2008 | 11:24 AM (EST)


As we stagger out into the middle of the ring for Round 1,293 of this heavyweight title-fight between two battered contenders for the Democratic Party crown, the cumulative effect of all the punches, head-butts and knockdowns has been to make us all feel soul-weary and half-concussed. As one who's become...

Read Post

What Will A Clinton "Victory" Feel Like?

385 Comments | Posted May 2, 2008 | 06:55 PM (EST)


Whoopee, kids! George Bush III and Hillary Clinton have called for a Gas-Tax Holiday! Let's celebrate in style! Whaddaya say we all kick our Magic Tax Rebates into one big kitty, put on our flag lapel-pins, car-pool out to the desert, and throw an End-of-the-World Celebration--a Woodstock of the Apocalypse!

...
Read Post

The Obliterator: Hillary Channels Her Inner Doctor Strangelove

30 Comments | Posted April 27, 2008 | 12:24 AM (EST)


Obliterate.

All week this word's been haunting me.

Ever since Hillary Clinton channelled her inner Doctor Strangelove on ABC-TV, vowing to "totally obliterate" Iran for some imagined attack on Israel in the future, that word's hung in the air like a tiny mushroom cloud. Of course, to the corporate...

Read Post

Watch the Zany New ABC Laff-Fest, Distracting America, with Hillary Clinton and Charlie Gibson -- Featuring Redd Foxx as The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Introducing "Little Georgie" Stephanopoulos as Joe McCarthy

5 Comments | Posted April 18, 2008 | 08:08 PM (EST)


It's zany hi-jinks a-plenty when a desperate, ambition-crazed politician (Hillary Clinton, playing herself) suddenly finds her power-base crumbling. Forced to team up with her doddering Republican opponent , John McCain (played by the corpse of Ted Knight), to plot against an upstart black candidate named Barack Obama (Blair Underwood), Hillary...

Read Post

The Springsteen Effect: Why This "Bitter" Thing Is Boomeranging on Clinton, From One Who Grew Up in the White Working Class

60 Comments | Posted April 16, 2008 | 07:01 PM (EST)


I grew up in the decaying mill town of Utica, New York, among gas-station attendants, nuns, glass-workers, alcoholics, conveyor-belt workers, and factory-hands. They were mostly devout Catholics--Italian, Polish, and Irish--and, when offered the chance, equally devout in their devotion to their labor unions. Utica boomed during World War II, churning...

Read Post

Another Scream Unheard, Another Corpse Unseen, Another Day of News

14 Comments | Posted April 7, 2008 | 01:51 AM (EST)


As Iraq-war-fatigue infects our Wolfs and Katies and Brians and Tims and Times and Newsweeks and all our daily papers, too -- with the percentage of news-time devoted to the war now shaved to a pitiful 3% -- the same flu-like torpor is filtering down to viewers and readers: when...

Read Post

"The Most Shocking Story You Will Ever Read!" -- Why Clinton's National Enquirer Strategy Is Bound to Fail

Posted April 2, 2008 | 05:24 PM (EST)


When an outhouse-supply rag like The National Enquirer trumpets a headline like "The Most Shocking Story You Will Ever Read!", as it does in its current issue, its 7-11 readers have every right to expect something truly juicy -- hard-core proof that Elvis' ghost impregnated Katie Couric during a...

Read Post

Obama Fathers Two-Headed Gay Terrorist Baby: The National Enquirer-ization of American Politics

32 Comments | Posted March 27, 2008 | 03:51 PM (EST)


As campaign politics in America lurches, zombie-like, deeper and deeper into the muck, with Hillary Clinton desperately flogging the Reverend Wright "scandal" in all its idiotic glory, it's time to study the true masters of smear-ology -- the supermarket tabloids. Here, in the sick, teeming id of America, tales of...

Read Post

The Public Self-Destruction of Bill Clinton

41 Comments | Posted March 24, 2008 | 03:08 PM (EST)


No one in American political history has squandered his reputation so wantonly, so publicly, and so quickly -- and in the pursuit of so little -- as Bill Clinton. As he desperately chases the impossible dream of a thousand more nights in a White House bed, he has laid bare...

Read Post

Bottom of the Ticket, Back of the Bus: Hillary Clinton's Racist Campaign

Posted March 13, 2008 | 04:21 PM (EST)


Where did it begin? Pick a time. How much can you stand to remember without getting nauseous? Back to Bob Kerrey, an early proponent of the slimy and absurd Muslim slurs? Back to the porcine Mark Penn, and his portrait of Obama as a shiftess cocaine fiend? Back to...

Read Post

Penalty Shots: Tim Russert's Drunken Tiebreaker Questions

Posted March 6, 2008 | 06:05 PM (EST)


Good evening, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama. Guys, I got blind, screaming drunk with Brian Williams last night because the two of us just couldn't take it any more. (You'd be amazed, but even when he's pounded down six Jack-and-Cokes, ol' Brian still has a voice that can induce instant coma...

Read Post

Time Has Come Today: Or, What Would Abbie Do?

Posted March 3, 2008 | 11:18 AM (EST)


At 17, on the Lower East Side of New York, I became Abbie Hoffman's protege in rebellion: he liked to call me "The Littlest Yippie." And one of the core-truths that Abbie embodied -- whether it was fist-fighting pro-war thugs in the streets of New York or marching through clouds...

Read Post

 
 
Bloggers Index›
 
 

 Site  Web ASK_logo