Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, December 17, 2010

Is Narcocorrido the New Hip-Hop?

By John Ballard


My first thoughts as I watched this for the first time.



  • Music moves the soul as nothing else can. It is no accident that inspirational music is associated with mass movements, from the civil rights movement to the rise of national socialism in Germany. The term Counterculture is virtually a music-based phnomenon. Even sports events salute music from pep bands at basketball games to marching bands at football half-times.

  • How long did it take for Hip-hop and Rap, both famously derivative of the prison culture, to cross cultural lines to a larger social matrix?

  • A national anti-immigrant obsession and widespread opposition to the Dream Act may be having the effect of driving the popularity of this American export. And yes, this is what happens when American entrepeneurship in the form of film and music is applied to another venue promising fabulous profits and quick return on investment.

  • How long before the NRA starts promoting Narcocorrido artists? Ninety percent of firearms in Mexico are "Made in USA."

  • Make no mistake about it. This is an American cultural phenomenon, not Mexican.

  • Do a You Tube search for "narcocorrido" and watch what comes up.





















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