That's Enough

While the title of this post is unoriginal, it really reflects how I feel about this election at this point. I'm legitimately angry, not for political reasons but because this country is seriously considering electing a senile 72 year old 4 time cancer survivor and his VP who is the political equivalent of a special needs child. McCain alone is a bad candidate to begin with. He is, first and foremost an idiot (as explained in an earlier post) who believes that staying in Iraq and possibly invading Iran are solutions for an already strained military. Aside from potentially starting the 3rd World War, McCain's fiscal policies are part of the extremely unsuccessful laissez-faire economic plan that the Reps have been using for the past couple years with no signs of slowing. All of this is well documented and there is no need to rehash it. His runningmate Palin, to me though, is both dangerous and insulting. Let's review the obvious stuff. McCain met this woman one time, ONE TIME DAMNIT and then suddenly asked her to be VP. In her 12 year political career this woman operated on a national level for less than 2 years. And this "national" level was as governor in the great state of Alaska, a state with a minuscule population. Even in her state, she supported drilling for oil and allegedly at one point contended that Global warming didn't exist (clearly she cares for the environment). For the other 10 years she was a city council member and mayor of a town of about 6,000 people. My neighborhood has more than 6,000 people. Most major Universities have more than 6,000 people. There's not much in life that's considered legit with LESS THAN 6,000 PEOPLE! This is a dangerous choice because she isn't qualified to be much of anything beyond Alaska and definitely not the person second in line for the presidency. John McCain has a decent chance of dying in office and the idea of this woman leading the most powerful country in the world terrifies me. I don't do the whole scared thing generally and I'm not one for sentimental feelings but I'm really concerned about this. Beyond that though, this choice insults the American voting public and particularly women. Is this the glass ceiling? Is being used by your party and brought in purely based on your identity as a woman, however unqualified you are, really what feminists fight for? I feel like the Republic party is laughing at Hillary supporters who they think are too stupid and caught up in the gender issue to recognize that not just any woman will do. And you know what the sad part is? They might not be wrong. This whole PUMA (party unity my ass) business is making a solid argument for that conclusion. The fact that female democrats could be so mad that Hillary lost that they vote AGAINST their right to choose is actually kinda scary. Also let me clear the record on that issue: when a woman of Hillary Clinton's influence, wealth and power is beat I can assure you someone went out and took it to her. She didn't get cheated, she got complacent and Barack got all in that ass (figuratively, duh) . She got what she asked for and even when she played dirty it was too late. Aside from that, Palin isn't even Hillary Clinton (and that's saying something). I think Palin said it best "What exactly does a VP do all day?" Great. Super. This woman should be the next leader of the free world. Absolutely. I honestly have had enough of this. Someone in my family recently suggested that Obama and Biden should focus on McCain and leave her alone so that they don't seem like they're bullying her. Now I love my fam but that is just incorrect. Shell her. Bomb her. Absolutely vaporize her credibility (not exactly a tall order). For example, her whole story about having a kid with down syndrome and having the experience of being a mother (something Cindy McCain cited I believe) doesn't make her a damn thing but a mother of a kid with down syndrome. That has exactly diddly shit to do with national security, the economy or really anything else. The dems cannot let this craziness slide. Democrats have been playing this spineless set of mind games for too long, by overestimating the intelligence of the voting public. All the while, Republicans have been able to transform all strengths into weaknesses by relentlessly going on the attack. That's how a draft dodging drunk was able to paint a vietnam vet with war medals as a coward (here's lookin at you John Kerry). It's time to play the same game. Demolish both McCain and Palin. It's time to take off the kid gloves because there is more at stake than just some political contest. These Republican candidates are dangerously unwise in their decisions (clearly) and to allow them to steal another one could actually lead to tragedy. I don't know about y'all but if Ameriicans are too stupid to recognize this shamelessly reckless ploy then I think it's time to move to Canada, who's with me?

P.S. For those of you who want more stats and facts on Palin and co. here's a pretty cool video my roomate found online and I think it sums up Palin's profile (from the perspective of anyone with sense). It's time to wrap up this reign of senseless political ineptitude and elect someone with some sense.

Hip-Hop on Life Support

Let me establish two things before I get into the discussion proper: first, Hip-Hop is musically my first love (I’ll come back to that later) and second, I generally try to avoid cultural topics because of the relativity of values and opinions but for this one i will make an exception. Hip-Hop is hurting me. She is like a bad girlfriend and I’m steady looking at other women because she keeps breaking my heart. She’s cheating on me with Soulja Boy. Look, at some point I was 17 too and I liked really silly stuff but I don’t think I ever strayed into minstrelsy. Soulja boy and the paradigm that allowed him to become successful have taken the bite out of one of the most powerful types of social protest music. Hip-Hop even in the days when it was about fun, had a form of social commentary that was particularly relevant. From obvious critiques like “The Message”, through less clear forms of commentary like the albums of NWA, Hip-Hop has always had something to say and usually it was something sorta relevant. Soulja Boy and his contemporaries are in the process of destroying that. Hip-Hop isn’t just going pop, it’s transforming into music whose sole purpose is to sell irreverent, irrelevant music to stupid people from the suburbs. One of my friends offered this opinion: Soulja Boy is saving Hip-Hop and making it relevant. If making bad music with no legitimate content is relevant, well you get the idea. Though this subject doesn’t really change a lot politically, I do think that Hip-Hop has a relevant history of being politically important even when it just expressed rage, indifference or violent lack of regard for the norms of western society. These expressions took the temperature of urban black life and that in and of itself was important because it allowed older generations to better understand the children they rejected or abandoned to die in inner cities across America. I don’t mean to pick on Soulja Boy but he’s the best example that I can find of this sad new movement of Hip-Hop. He’s a kid and he wants to sell records, yeah yeah yeah I’ve heard all the reasons (read: excuses) but the fact of the matter is that much of our leadership is based on celebrity and we’re really not in a position where we can afford not to hold people accountable for their garbage. Soulja Boy doesn’t raise kids nor does any other rapper but in many cases nobody raises these kids and to ignore the responsibility of those with so much power over youth culture is frankly being ignorant. Nas was right, Hip-Hop is on some silliness now but it isn’t dead it just needs to be reminded why it became relevant in the first place. In the words of my first girlfriend, Lauryn Hill, (everybody has dreams, right?) “Hip-Hop started out in the heart, uh, now everybody tryna chart…”

Don't Wanna be and American Idiot

Ok so as a christian I felt like it made sense for me to watch the special with Obama and McCain at Rick Warren's Saddleback church. McCain did his usual thoughtless extremism bit: "Evil exists and must be defeated". Yeah, John evil does exist. Evil like going into third world countries, using extreme poverty to pimp the people, setting up dummy regimes into order to exploit natural resources and watching the regions rip themselves apart. Hmm, sounds like evil to me. Well McCain's (and America's) preposterously idiotic and amoral (not to be confused with immoral) pretensions of foreign policy aside, I found the relevance of the program in Obama's message. Obama scares me, not because his policies aren't acceptable or because there's anything wrong with his personality, etc. He scares me because he's too mature for America. Barack Obama seems like a profoundly reasonable man in a completely unreasonable age in a country where punchlines seem to all too often become realities. Haha, the president is an idiot. Haha, we're killing people over natural resources and not even doing a good job pretending we're not. Haha, if we continue down this road we really might be responsible for the end of the world. Oh wait that's all true. But Americans eat it up. John McCain said that he would "hunt Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell". What kind of crazy ass rhetoric is that for any grown man, much less a candidate for the leader of the free world? What Bin Laden did (well we all seem to forget that there isn't any verifiable proof that he was specifically responsible but anyway) was abhorrent. It was morally abhorrent and if he is responsible for the deaths of those people, he should be brought to whatever justice is appropriate (read: dragged into the street and shot in the head). The point is that I can say this because I am not suggesting that I should be allowed access to the preposterous number of nuclear warheads that the American military holds. In this day and age trying to bully the world is just silly because there are some people (evidently) whose countries you can bomb into parking lots and they will not stop coming. Let me make this clearer: THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WITH WHOM DIPLOMACY IS A GOOD IDEA. So installing and overthrowing regimes in their countries in regions that are already unstable is a good way to start World War 3. The problem is that Americans are so fat, lazy and spoiled that the idea of bullying the rest of the planet seems like a legitimate option. We have all been fed the notion that American ideals are innately superior to the ideals of other countries and that America has never lost a war along with many other myths and bedtime stories. This faux superiority is the basis for American warmongering enthusiasm. I guess everyone skipped US AP history in high school and forgot that we got our asses kicked on our own soil in 1812 and a foreign army marched through Washington and burned the White House to the ground. So clearly we aren't so vastly superior in terms of our military history (let's not forget Somalia, Vietnam and the other skirmishes in which we demonstrated our mortality) but what of our ideological superiority? Clearly American democracy is the best in the world right? Umm naw, not exactly. Democracy here is cool but we so regularly put it on hold. Japanese internment, Black slavery, cheated elections, the patriot act, national security legislation, all examples of people America putting democracy on hold on American soil, no less. We won't even get started on what America does abroad with its "democracy". What I'm basically saying is that this is all completely bogus. This superiority complex is a joke but its what keeps American idiots "safe" and happy. This is exactly why a reasonable adult cannot be president of the US. I'm not saying Obama can't win per se but I think that the only reason a senile old man who mistakes one country for another is still in the race is because of he plays into that complex. His black and white view of the world is shared by much of the rest of the country because they think that they can afford it. He who has the biggest gun makes the rules right? No, not these days. In the age of suicidal extremism he who cares less about his life makes can make the rules too, and if Americans don't start recognizing the need for reasonable foreign policies, we'll find out the hard way again. Obama, God willing, will be the next President because if he isn't another regime of intolerance and ignorance might just lead us to our last regime at all.

Big Ups to All My Haters...

You're a hater. Don't hate on me. Stop hating. Recently a couple of my friends and I had a discussion about haters. We thought about most of the people who talk about haters and we realized something. We as Black people only claim that people are hating when they critique us while we're doing stupid shit. Think about it, most rappers complain about getting hated on because they drive a "car the color of watermelon with the bubble gum inside" or some such inane statement. God forbid someone suggest that you spend that money on your family who're still stuck in the projects or yourself so that when your bubble bursts you'll have legitimate investments and not just that magical combination of jewelry and debt. This doesn't only apply to rappers though, we have allowed ourselves to fall into cultural and intellectual sewage because everyone is scared to call dumbness exactly what it is. Beyond that, we have developed this strange moral relativism in which the ends justify the means so much that we celebrate people who are (or were) legitimately evil all in the name of not hating. Men who use womens' bodies to collect payment should be hated on. Dudes who sell concentrated, addictive death to their people should be hated on. People who shoot other people over blocks that belong to no one but the US Government (it's not your block, stupid, you just live there) should be hated on. These people are in many cases the equivalent of urban terrorists and they need to be hated on! Look, there are differences between people in their situations that make drastic and morally abhorrent actions seem necessary and I can understand that. It's only the grace of God that kept me from those situations but that doesn't justify people who can avoid it engaging in those activities or seeing something stupid and saying it's cool because they don't wanna hate. To combat this, I'm starting the "hate-on-em" movement. If you forever rap about selling drugs and killing people and then get all shy or angry when someone asks you why you portray negativity, then I'm going to call you on it, not because I'm a hater (what do you really have that I would need to hate on?) but because you are being a dummy. I grew up in the hood too so all that "i rap about what i see" garbage is not gonna fly because let's be frank, you were not that dude (the killer, superhustler, pimp, etc.) if you made it in the rap game because you'd still be in the hood right now if you were. I'm not only going to go after rappers, this applies to intellectuals and politicians as well. I'm hating on Marion Berry for smoking crack. I'm hating on Cornell West for wasting his monstrous talent on Rap CD's and strange misguided attempts to be a rock star intellectual (aka pretending to reach out to the youth) . I'm hating because it seems like no one else will. Everyone is so concerned with the concept of being a hater that we've allowed our standards to fall to dangerous levels in many areas of Black life. Now suddenly, entertainers are our intellectual standard bearers and anything that requires more than 2 minutes thought is "deep". Enough is enough. It's time for us to take back a culture that has been hijacked by greedy, sellout Black people and large corporations. We have become slaves to the almighty dollar in so many areas and now that Blackness is a commodity, "hating" has become public enemy number one. Everyone is a hustler nowadays and by suggesting that what they do is illogical, stupid, morally wrong or anything other than "their unique hustle" is hating. Sorry y'all, but if y'all think that this craziness is justified and that calling it craziness is hating, then I am a hater to the bone gristle. And if you are busy worrying about being a hater with the AIDS rates in the Black Community (comparable to third world countries), the homicide rates among young black men (15 times more likely to be killed than any other group), and the fact that many other ethnic groups have come to this country after we did and surpassed us in terms of measurable progress (not all our fault but a problem nonetheless) then I AM HATING ON YOU!

CNN

It's funny that we're all over TV now. Suddenly it's important to know what it's like to be "Black in America". I don't actually have anything particularly deep to say about this phenomenon as there is little to say beyond a sort of cliched statement about how it's messed up that we're only important when there's a Black Democratic nominee. I know that this is just Standard Operating Procedure for the media: deal with issues when they're hot. Race is hot cuz Barack is hot. The Media is, first and foremost, a business and I'm not going to fault them for being inadvertantly racially insensitive while pursuing the almighty dollar. What does concern me is how we use this opportunity. As previously stated, Jesse and Al are more or less dead in terms of power or relevance, so how can we use this exposure to address a couple of issues? Lord knows we have let some opportunities pass us by before. We let Katrina demolish the 3rd Ward and turn Black N.O. residents into refugees while FEMA took its sweet time getting water into the superdome and we didn't make more than a squeak. We let the country ignore our dire circumstances (again) because those affected were poor and Black. When Kanye West has the most notable statement on the issue from the standpoint of the Black Community, (though I do appreciate his enthusiasm) something is wrong. We can't let this opportunity go by but how do we harness it? I would argue that this might be the time for other (as in not Obama) Black politicians to offer up a set of new policies or initiatives in as public a way as possible. If they're smart, they'll use the figures and other representations of Black problems on TV as the focuses for their initiatives in order to try to make some headway on those issues. If I just haven't been paying attention and Black politicians have been doing so under my nose, then I humbly apologize and I'm glad to hear I was wrong (trust me, my ego can handle it). But if the situation is as I suspect, its time to get in gear y'all. Time waits for no man (or woman) and CP time will not cut it here.

Ba-Rock with them Obamas

Let’s be clear: Barack might be the first Black President of the United States at some point soon but when he enters his tenure he will face a country, fractured at best, with factions and divisions that he will have to navigate. He may be the first Black President but he will be the president of a predominantly white country with a rather large population of people who will feel “disenfranchised” by his presidency. I won’t bother getting into the moral or logistical problems of such silly sentiments but if you need evidence, look at how his vicious battle against Hillary Clinton was. People were beyond the point of angry about his victory, many were furious and in spite of relatively minor policy differences between the candidates they were in some cases willing to vote Republican just to spite Obama. He has a tough line to tread coming up so we as Black people really can’t afford to expect his presidency to be the answer to all our problems. To a degree his hands may be tied by the difficulty of maintaining his necessary “color of water/post-racial” politics. Besides that, there may be a significant problem with his presidency: we lose traction for the whole “perpetual victim” argument. Black people will not be able to argue as effectively that we are the victims of vicious circumstance and evil conspiring by other races due to the simplistic (read: completely ass-backward) assumption that a Black president means that we’ve made it. For most Black people at the grassroots level Barack Obama’s presidency won’t mean diddly squat outside of some sort of intangible “inspiration factor” and a decent amount of social capital. Too bad “inspiration” is not (as far as I know) edible and social capital hasn’t paid anyone’s rent lately. These intangibles aren’t enough bang for our proverbial buck, so what’s the solution? How do we get the most out of this situation? Two words: Michelle Obama. Michelle is hardcore and, to a degree, unapologetically Black (I see you B.Terry, haha) making her our conduit to presidential power. If Hillary Clinton is allowed to count any of that “foreign policy experience” (read: sawdust, bullshit and fraudulent sniper fire) she accrued while in the white house, we should be able to get at Michelle very effectively to push some of our social problem solutions and other reasonable domestic agendas. If we can’t go front door with Barack, Michelle will sneak us in through the window. If Eleanor Roosevelt is any example, the First Lady of the US, while not wielding any concrete power, does have the ability to bring subjects to light and attract funding, attention and potential solutions. We can use Michelle as our advocate because she thankfully doesn’t have any votes attached to her name and seems to care enough about Blackness and Black people to be down. The jury is still out on Barack but Michelle is rockin’ with us so let’s use it while we can. In the words of the eminent Hip-Hop scholar, young Cory Gunz: “We Ba-rock with them Obamas.” Ya dig?

The Messianic Complex

In my last post I referred to the ways in which each Black person can contribute to our collective benefit. Making moves on behalf of Black people isn't terribly complicated but we have suffered from a messianic complex for a considerable amount of time. I'll address both the complex and the ways in which we can all contribute (and thus conquer the complex) in a second. First though, the let's deal with the problems of the messianic complex. The problems (at least these days) can be summed up in three words: Al and Jesse. Not to pick on these two, but the only reason that anyone still listens to them is because of our messianic complex as a people. For those who aren't up on the messianic complex concept, I'm not referring to any sort of religious themes, I'm actually talking about the psychic need of Black people to have a savior figure come and lead us to the "promised land". Al and Jesse exist as political and cultural entities because they are holdovers from the "golden days" (read: the Civil Rights Movement) and the leadership vacuum in the community has made allowed them to persist. Black people feel like we need a leader. We need someone to tell us what to do. We need one of our own to rise up and take charge. This complex is by no means exclusive to Black Americans but I'm not really in the business of worrying about everybody else (let's handle the issues at home first, ok?). The messianic complex poses some serious problems. It allows relics and demagogues to represent Black people in public and somehow empowers these in the minds of our more impressionable brothers and sisters, preventing some Black people with means of improving our situation from doing so based on a "lack of direction" (read: no messianic figure telling them what to do). Look, Al and Jesse don't have any better idea of a holistic plan for improving Black life than anyone else, and though the problems are complicated and challenging, awaiting a word from "on high" is fruitless and no longer an excuse. I'll even propose a couple of ways people can be agents for the improvement of our people. For those of us who are interested in politics, you don't have to be Barack Obama to effect change for Black people, as a matter of fact some of the lower positions in the political ladder allow people like aldermen and city council members to affect real change especially in urban settings. Businessmen can support local aldermen and city council members in their efforts to affect positive changes in Black communities by holding fundraisers or allowing them to hold community meetings in their business areas or even just selling buttons to support the candidates. But to a degree these things are already happening, so what more can be done? By decreasing the level of attention on these messianic figures (Obama included), Black people can improve our communities from within by focusing on improving each individual situation at the grassroots level. And as a man very skeptical of politicians, I propose that we support individual policies, not necessarily the personalities behind them. If we can be more judicious at the local and national level concerning what policies we support, we can earn a lot more in the way of support (both financial and otherwise) for initiatives that benefit us. What that means is detaching ourselves locally and nationally from personality politics. No more political figures whom we support regardless of what they do or don't do, we need to think critically about if these politicians and other leaders are providing what they promise to us or if our loyalty is leading us to essential disenfranchisement (because our votes and/or support are assumed). This means looking critically not only at our community leadership but also at our beloved democratic party. I am far from a republican and definitely not very conservative but if the Republican Party is proposing policies that benefit us, there is no reason not to sell our votes to the highest bidder. This perception of Black people being married to the Democratic Party or to a specific set of obsolete "leaders" needs to die with Jesse's career. So, let's rid of ourselves of this messianic complex and leave the saviors alone until Jesus comes home.

Ni%$as and Black people

Why is it that whenever somebody Black messes up, we all take the blame? Are we lawyers or something, all representing the Black community in the court of public opinion? Well, quite frankly, yes, we are. Black Americans are seen as a monolithic force, a huge monster with one mind, one opinion, one set of beliefs. When one of us succeeds, we all do. When one of us fails miserably, we all do. Whether we like it or not, we're in this (this struggle for success as a race) together. There tend to be a range of responses to that suggestion. There's acceptance of the fact that regardless of differences in personal feelings, financial wealth, social status or complexion the rest of the world sees us as a monolith, and treats us as such. Then, there's my personal favorite: "I'm not like them! I'm nothing like them! (Continues to rant about being raised well, going to the best schools, knowing how to act, not being from the "ghetto", etc.) Well as much as I hate to burst the bourgie bubble, you can feel however you want to about it but don't forget to note how much your friends and colleagues from other races and cultures ask you about Black culture as if you're a walking talking copy of Encarta Africana. You are Black people and until the world becomes sophisticated enough to stop lumping people together in confined stereotypical groups, each of you is connected to ALL Black people. So there are two choices: one, whine about it and make your own money but never really achieve the levels of success you desire, based on all that "dead weight" (read: your people). Or, two, accept this fact and contribute to the success of Black people in whatever reasonable ways you can (no one is asking you to bend into a pretzel or give up all your worldly goods). You can blame everything on this thereoretical "them" (read: Black people who make mistakes) or you can view the problem critically and assess where you can make contributions. When I say contributions, I don't mean giving 10 dollars to a local Boys and Girls Club (though that is a good way to use money and a pretty legit tax break). I mean that you can see how you can use whatever position you're in to move as an agent for Black people on the larger scale so that we can continue to progress (however incrementally). Because as much as you may want to separate yourself from "them", in the eyes of the world we're all Black people and we're all ni#%as. We might as well move with solidarity, or else we'll never prove them wrong.

Jesse, oh Jesse

Look, I appreciate Black leadership as much as the next man. I respect the difficulties of being the "representative" of a population of (approx.) 35 million with diverse interests and opinions. Now that I've gotten that disclaimer out of the way, it's time to get down to business. Jesse, please stop. Now. And no, I'm not joking. After the debacle with your secretary/mistress, your culturally insensitive comments about the Jewish community of New York (referring to the city as "hymie-town"), and this latest remark about your plans for Barack Obama's genitalia I think its time to wrap it up. The show's over, call it a day. Most Black Americans can't remember the last relevant activity you've been involved in. Reactionary protests that have completely overused the concept of civil disobedience don't count anymore. The irony is that you and Al Sharpton are still considered the most relevant names in Black community leadership (just to distinguish you from the Black political leadership). Al, for his part, is now being beat up on by rap artists (see Lil Wayne on Tha Carter 3 and Jay-Z's American Gangster). The Civil Rights Movement is over y'all. Racism, at this point, (though it undoubtedly exists) is not the biggest problem that Black Americans face. For example, last year you made a big stink about gun stores and reinstating the assault weapons ban in the US. Gangsters do not buy their guns from gun stores, Jesse. Most homicides in Black communities occur mostly through the use of smaller guns (that means handguns Jesse not AK-47's and AR-15's). This is exactly what I'm taking about: you're out of touch. Though anecdotes don't always amount to legitimate evidence, this is not a rare situation for you to be in because you are very regularly behind the curve or firing in the wrong direction. Don Imus is a racist old hillbilly. What he said about those women on the Rutgers basketball team was completely uncalled for and was more importantly untrue. With that said, there are still bigger issues on the table. I'm not sure about you but I'm a little more concerned with the fact that as a Black male at age 21 I am 15 times more likely to be the victim of a homicide than any other group (but maybe that's just me). There some themes here Jesse: whenever you're on TVyou are chasing the wrong problems. Al is just as bad but at least he hasn't been caught looking as absolutely idiotic as you have. We have a Black candidate in a presidential election and you're being a hater. Look, if you have legitimate policy issues with the man, thats fine, I can't begrudge you that. But the combination of your rapidly decreasing relevance as a voice for social justice and your inability to control your mouth and your libido make you an embarassment to the Black Community nationally. You are making us look like whiny, a-strategic, cliched dummies prone to silly infighting even in the face of larger issues. Take a bow and ride off into the sunset because your services are no longer required.