Michael Mechanic

Senior Editor

Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. Father of two mostly charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps (okay, not the father), he lives in Oakland, California, where he raises four chickens, plays his guitar, and is lately attempting to teach himself fiddle and mandolin.

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Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He set out to be a scientist, and as an undergrad spent a year in an organic chemistry lab at UC Berkeley trying to synthesize natural poisons found in the skin of certain tropical frogs. He later earned a masters degree in cellular and developmental biology, and another in journalism. In 2009, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for public service, as one of five writers in MoJo's "Torture Hits Home" package. The father of two usually charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps, Michael lives in Oakland, California, where, after years of classical piano and raucous punk-rock drumming (and putting out more than a dozen CDs on his former DIY label, Bad Monkey Records), he has retired to old-time and traditional American music, blues-guitar fingerpicking, and lately, teaching himself to play fiddle and mandolin. His family's chickens are named Lucia, Podge, Cat, and Weed-Whacker. The goldfish have no names, because the family plans to eat them someday.

Putting Torture Memos to Music

—By Michael Mechanic

| Thu Apr. 23, 2009 1:54 PM PDT

I know we're not supposed to be advocates around here, but I can't help it. I think I love Jonathan Mann. He's like our own hometown Flight of the Conchords. The SF Bay Area musician and self-videographer set out in January to compose a song and music video a day, something a once-a-quarter songwriter like yours truly can barely comprehend. And Mann has delivered, too, producing 113 ditties so far this year about culture and current events (posted at his website, RockCookieBottom.com) thus catching the attention of our good friend Rachel Maddow, who invited him on her show last Friday to perform a song that calls on Paul Krugman to step up and help America with its fiscal policy and I think this is a run-on sentence isn't it? Mann told Maddow he was awaiting the release of the torture memos so that he could set 'em to music. And here's what he came up with: Mann channeling John Yoo on waterboarding. If it's a hit, Yoo, being a lawyer, will probably demand a cut of the royalties. Indeed, he may well need it for his legal defense fund.

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Rosa Parks Didn't Act Alone: Meet Claudette Colvin

—By Michael Mechanic

| Tue Jan. 20, 2009 1:32 PM PST

Colvin's act of defiance led to a plan that made history.

In his warm-up for the first-ever inauguration of a black American president, the actor Samuel L. Jackson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, speaking of the sacrifices of everyday people to bring about the event we all witnessed this morning, including the well-worn story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Jackson told the story as the old history books do, more or less the way my child, then six years old, had learned it at school: Parks, a department store seamstress en route home from work, told the police she hadn't boarded the bus intending to get arrested. She was simply tired, and wanted to get home like anyone else. But the true story was far more nuanced, as revealed in Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose, which is written for teenage readers.

Parks was certainly brave. (Standing up to white power in that place and time made you a target.) And she may not have boarded that particular bus, on that particular day, intending to get arrested. But Parks also knew what she was doing. Sure, she was a seamstress, one widely known and respected in Montgomery's black community. But as secretary of the local NAACP chapter, Parks also was deeply involved in a movement to reform the city's draconian segregation laws—one primed for action thanks to a then 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Renaming of Bush Street

—By Michael Mechanic

| Tue Jan. 20, 2009 10:28 AM PST

I've long fantasized about doing something like this to the street signs for Bush Street in downtown San Francisco. But apparently local artist Alex Zecca beat me to it. He escaped jail, according to the SF Bay Guardian's blog, but had to take all the stickers down—alas.

Flickr photo courtesy LaughingSquid.com

Cell Phone Lawsuit Follows Mojo Investigation

—By Michael Mechanic

| Tue Dec. 2, 2008 3:40 PM PST

On the heels of a recent Mother Jones investigation into the mortal dangers of driving while gabbing on a cell phone, the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety has sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, accusing it of illegally withholding information related to the risks.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in US District Court in Washington, DC, claims that the federal agency violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to release documents—including the first-ever government estimate of auto fatalities related to cell phone use: 955 deaths in 2002. NHTSA is a branch of the Department of Transportation that regulates the auto industry and aims to reduce injuries and deaths on the nation's highways. Contacted today, agency spokesman Rae Tyson declined to comment on the suit.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

The Empire Strikes Out

Soldier-scholar Andrew Bacevich on his blockbuster book, a less-costly Afghanistan strategy, and why it doesn't really matter who's president.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Oct. 13, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel turned professor of history and international relations at Boston University, wasn't prepared for all the attention his latest book has received. Published in August, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism has clearly struck a chord, its title name-dropped by foreign policy enthusiasts as a must-read analysis of how America has strayed from greatness. Metropolitan Books, a Holt imprint, was prepared for modest sales with an initial press run of around 13,000. But the book's eye-opening qualities promptly landed it on the New York Times best-seller list, where it remains six weeks later, and the publisher has been reupping ever since. "I can't imagine how these politicians do it," the author told me, referring to the physical demands of media interviews. "I wouldn't have the endurance."

[Read the full article]