It's an uncomfortable fact that, deep down, a good percentage of hip-hop scholars really want to be emcees. Born
voyages into some cringe-worthy moments when writers try to seamlessly
code-switch between contemporary black vernacular and academic-speak, a
feat only Dyson has perfected. Most other writers end up looking as
contrived as that kid who brought a written rhyme into a cipher and
passed it off as freestyle. By "trees," one writer helpfully explains
with an ellipsis, she means marijuana. Uh, thanks for the
clarification.
The premature declaration of hip-hop's demise in Born's
introduction casts a shadow over the entire book. The only problem with
this view, which often happens to coincide exactly with the point at
which a given rap critic creeps toward middle age, is that it's
perennial. (Even Nas himself has pronounced hip-hop dead.) As rapper
Common reminds us in the book's foreword, his own nostalgic eulogy for
hip-hop's artistic integrity, "I Used to Love H.E.R.," was released the
same year Illmatic ushered in hip-hop's East Coast Renaissance.
And the hits of 1994 kept on coming. The Notorious B.I.G.'s hectic and
haunting album Ready to Die changed rap forever and Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik foreshadowed Outkast's critical and commercial success. The following year, Tupac Shakur struck platinum from prison with Me Against The World. And two years after Illmatic, a little-known emcee named Jay-Z dropped his first album, Reasonable Doubt.
As most of you know I've pretty much aged out of the music. I think that's fine. But those of over 30 need to be careful not to confuse the music dying for us, with the music dying for the world.
That said, lyrically, it really doesn't get much better than Illmatic. When I was a kid, I thought only better (lyrically) things would follow. I think that was a function of me not really understanding why most people were listening to hip-hop. Sure some of us obsessed over the words, but Dre basically had it right--"Ya'll don't wanna hear me, you just wannna dance." That's basically been the case from jump. Great lyrics were a beautiful and important side-effect, but a side-effect nonetheless.
Many years ago I coined the phrase "Choker Manning" because up to
2006 he had never won a championship on any level. In the biggest games
of his career, up to that point, he had played his worst games.
The Quarterback position is about not just producing in the regular
season, but performing in the playoffs. Manning finally won his ring,
but as we chronicled in the "5 Reasons Super Bowl Prediction" he didn't
have that defining moment.
He had that moment staring at him and he blinked. Legendary
quarterbacks simply can not blink and throughout his career Manning has
blinked a lot.
He is now 9-9 in the playoffs and 1-1 in Super Bowls. Brett Favre,
the man who Peyton Manning will one day pass in the record books, is
12-10 in the playoffs and 1-1 in Super Bowls. Peyton Manning is a first
ballot Hall of Famer just like Favre, but right now he isn't on the
Mount Rushmore of Greatest Quarterbacks of all time.
Peyton Manning is one of the best of all time, but will never be considered "THE BEST"
until he has that defining moment and wins multiple Super Bowls. He has
every skill you would in a quarterback except that skill you can't
define. Montana had it. Brady had it. Bradshaw had it.
I deeply suspect that people are moving the goal posts. I think this is about expectations, and folks who are arguing for "multiple Super Bowls" would have been arguing for "the big one" five years ago.
That aside, I don't really get how you can argue that Terry Bradshaw is ahead of Brett Favre or Peyton Manning on the Mount Rushmore of Quarterbacks. If anything it points to the limits of using Super Bowls. I think Dan Marino is ahead of Terry Bradshaw, and yeah, Troy Aikman and Roger Stauchbach. I love them both, but neither belong in a conversation with Peyton Manning, Joe Montana and Dan Marino. By the "multiple Super Bowls" argument, Peyton Manning is the equivalent of Mark Rypien, Trent Dilfer and Joe Theismann.
I also think that this kind of argument actually subtracts from the opposing team. Pre-Saints, Manning faced two really good teams. I had no idea what the Jets could have really done to stop him. But the Saints figured it out--keep his ass off the field. And they did everything they could--from onside kicks to going for it on fourth down--to that end. As a fan of aggressive football, it was great to watch. But it's hard to argue that you've conquered anything, if you aren't facing much of an obstacle. If Manning is a serial choker, then what did the Saints accomplish? More likely, on Sunday Peyton Manning and the Colts were beaten. It happens. Especially when you're facing a great team.
Terry Gross talks to David Dow, a lawyer who's spent 20 years defending death row inmates. Virtually all of these guys have committed horrendous crimes. But Dow is working in the penalty phase of the trial, and, for the most part, isn't trying to exonerate them--he's trying to keep the state from killing them. He loses a lot.
Health care as home repair. E.J. Dionne tells the story of Jay Inslee who was swept out of office the last time the Dems failed to deliver health care, but came back in 96:
"I introduced myself as a fella who was defeated in 1994, the last time
we didn't pass meaningful health-care reform," Inslee recalls saying.
"I said it was a painful event, and I didn't want them to go through
that pain." In politics, he told his colleagues, assuming the "fetal
position" can be the most dangerous thing to do.
And then he recounted all the grief he and his family went through
while work on their kitchen renovation dragged on and on and on.
"During that time, I had blood lust against my contractor," Inslee
said. "Six months went by, and he was still arguing with the plumber.
Eight months went by, and there were still wires hanging down
everywhere, and he was having trouble with the building inspector."
Inslee looked at his colleagues and declared: "We've got to finish the
kitchen." His point was that Americans won't experience any of the
benefits of health-care reform until Congress puts a new system in
place.
I'm sure you guys can extend and twist this metaphor all kinds of ways. A couple of you made some good arguments for the health care summit as great political theater. I guess I'm not convinced that the public wants to see more process. I think they just want this thing done.
You get the sense that the Times has had this one in the can since Nov. 2008. I see them running some iteration of it annually. In February preferably. I suppose it's better than fried chicken and collard greens in the caf.
Who am I kidding, no it isn't. Bring on the colored greens and darkie meat!
Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic's very good politics
blogger, was asked by Michael Kinsley to describe his typical day of
information consumption, otherwise known as reading. Ambinder's day
begins and ends with Twitter, and there's plenty of Twitter in between.
No mention of books, except as vacation material via the Kindle. I'm
sure Ambinder still reads books when he's not on vacation, but it
didn't occur to him to include them in his account, and I'd guess that
this is because they're not a central part of his reading life.
And he's not alone. Just about everyone I know complains about the
same thing when they're being honest--including, maybe especially,
people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of
books and the loss of time for books. It's no less true of me, which is
why I'm trying to place a few limits on the flood of information that I
allow into my head.
Ahem: Allow me to answer that question as thought were asked of me--or as though it were even a question! Here I am discussing my own Media Diet:
I spend a considerable amount of time reading books, because I blog
about reading books too. I usually do some reading in the morning.
Right now, I'm reading "In Old Virginia: Slavery, Farming, and Society in the Journal of John Walker"
by Claudia L. Bushman. Basically this woman got a hold of this Virginia
planter's diary and is analyzing it and talking about the particulars
of daily life in Virginia and the South.
Of course I listed a considerable number of blogs before that. I'm not on twitter. I just don't see the point. But I part with George in the sense that I think that's about my personal predilections. I'm not convinced it reflects a refined critique of the future of information.
These things come together in weird ways. Without getting into specifics, last month was the best month this blog has had since the election high. But the posts that do the best, in terms of traffic and comments, aren't quick hit, off the cuff, witty observations (Crash-bashing excluded) but the dense, long-ish stuff that usually comes from reading books. A couple of weeks ago, we had 100plus comment discussing whether slave should be considered as assets, labor, or both.
This is probably particular to me, but nothing has encouraged me to read more books than blogging here. It provides content for the site but it also makes book-reading more enjoyable. Being outside academia, I don't know where else I could find people to discuss Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom. I've actually been thinking about trying to get a bunch of commenters together to read Ulysses. I've never read it, and can't see myself plowing through it solo. But together we may yet conquer.
One last thing--I think the fact that I don't have a TV and haven't been to the movies in almost two years plays into this. I do video-game. But it's much easier to structure my time around gaming.
Seeing him in that last clip got me to thinking on how he's devolved over the past few years, or just revealed his true self. When Rolling Stone ran that huge expose in 2008, I basically disregarded it for my standard biases against anonymous sources and gossip.
But McCain complete flip on Don't Ask, Don't Tell and his general pettiness and umbrage-taking at the slightest perceived insult (dig the clip below) really make the case for a second read. One big thing about Obama that I love is that I never get the sense that he's petty.
A White House official, speaking on background, stressed that the
meeting in no way signals a retreat from Obama's commitment to push
ahead with comprehensive health care reform. He's interested in hearing
out Republican ideas, the official said, but when the discussion is
done he wants to see a bill move forward--and pass.
Why? Is he seriously interested in changing the bill to include more Republican ideas. Seriously? If not then what is he doing? Trying to show the American people how broad-minded he is? I like how Obama has come out over the past week. But I can't escape the feeling that there is no real plan. One day Rahm is telling us that health care is fifth on the list of priorities, the next day Obama is telling us that it's still at the top--or some such.
I'm having a really hard time seeing how this is going to happen. They don't have the votes. And by Obama's lights, it doesn't seem to much that can be done to create them. If Democrats lose this, with the kind of majority they command right now, with a Democratic president, why should any voter trust them to do any of the heavy lifting that's needed in this country?
This FT piece arguing that Obama's Chicago circle is killing him is making the rounds on the progressive blogs. John says he hasn't read it, but is skeptical. He probably should be:
But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that
is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for
campaigning rather than governing, they say.
In dozens of
interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington - most of
them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval
Office - each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very
tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people - Rahm
Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie
Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications
chief.
My issues with anonymous sourcing aside, I came away thinking that there probably was a critique to be made, just not a geographical one. Anyway, check it out yourself. I'd love for a journalist to really report out this charge that Rahm Emanuel is ruining everything. This piece kinda tries it, but it isn't convincing.
People are talking about the Jane Mayer piece. I haven't read it, but there aren't many journalists whom I respect more. I'll report back after I've had a chance to read.
Been meaning to post this fantastic piece from the Washington Monthly on how Texas' school text-book committees are basically plotting to make the nation's kids as dumb as possible. Mariah Blake reports:
On the global front, Barton and company want textbooks to play up
clashes with Islamic cultures, particularly where Muslims were the
aggressors, and to paint them as part of an ongoing battle between the
West and Muslim extremists. Barton argues, for instance, that the
Barbary wars, a string of skirmishes over piracy that pitted America
against Ottoman vassal states in the 1800s, were the "original war
against Islamic Terrorism." What's more, the group aims to give history
a pro-Republican slant--the most obvious example being their push to
swap the term "democratic" for "republican" when describing our system
of government. Barton, who was hired by the GOP to do outreach to black
churches in the run-up to the 2004 election, has argued elsewhere that
African Americans owe their civil rights almost entirely to Republicans
and that, given the "atrocious" treatment blacks have gotten at the
hands of Democrats, "it might be much more appropriate that ... demands
for reparations were made to the Democrat Party rather than to the
federal government." He is trying to shoehorn this view into textbooks,
partly by shifting the focus of black history away from the civil
rights era to the post-Reconstruction period, when blacks were
friendlier with Republicans.
Barton and Peter Marshall initially tried to
purge the standards of key figures of the civil rights era, such as
César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall, though they were forced to back
down amid a deafening public uproar. They have since resorted to a more
subtle tack; while they concede that people like Martin Luther King Jr.
deserve a place in history, they argue that they shouldn't be given
credit for advancing the rights of minorities. As Barton put it, "Only
majorities can expand political rights in America's constitutional
society." Ergo, any rights people of color have were handed to them by
whites--in his view, mostly white Republican men.
Because Texas buys so many textbooks, the effect of this sort of thing is felt nationally. Check out the piece. Try to avoid being depressed.
Cop in the hood digs up this great nugget from 1911:
The demoralizing character of some of the moving picture shows, says the New Jersey Law Journal,
continues to be exemplified by proceedings from time to time in our
local and county criminal courts. One of the latest instances was a
case which came before Judge Case, of the Somerset County courts, where
a bright little fellow of nine years of age was arraigned before the
judge for truancy and for incorrigibility. The prosecutor informed the
court that the root of the boy's misconduct was the moving picture
show, and the counsel for the boy stated that the offender had been a
good child at home and obedient until he developed the passion for
attending moving picture shows.
The account of the case then goes on to
say: "When the boy was commanded to stand up before Judge Case he burst
into tears. Judge Case called him to his seat behind the bar and talked
to him kindly, after which he announced that he would place him in
charge of Probation Officer Osbourn for three years. In closing his
remarks Judge Case said that the moving picture shows were undoubtedly
the most demoralizing force in the country to-day. The pictures had a
great fascination for even adults, and the graphic portrayals of
holdups, robberies, and of immoral scenes and characters, made a
lasting impression on the minds of children that were demoralizing in
the extreme. Judge Case said that the court would expect the law
relating to moving picture shows to be strictly obeyed in the county."
Heh. "Moving Picture Show." One of the great thrills of reading the old slave oral histories, is the sense among the slave that the "talking pictures" were ruining black youth. With due respect to the slaves, these would be the youth that launched the civil rights movement.
An almost vice-president, likely presidential candidate, in the friendliest of friendly interviews--writes the answers on her hand. This is, among other things, an attack ad waiting to happen. But more than that it really is what happens when you turn conservatism into nothing more than the white populist id.
Maybe it always was that. I don't know. What you have here is a party being eaten alive by the hate that they stoked for decades, dumbasses who think the essence of "Real America" is stupidity and ignorance, who'd sooner have a president who packs a cheat-sheet to a tea party, than a Indonesian/socialist/nigger/Muslim. Soon we'll know if they're right.
The popular environmental movement (not talking about deep ecology
here) has still taken the individualist culture for granted. The acts
we tend to look to in order to be green are individual acts --
recylcing, driving less, using a cloth bag -- whatever. But any real
change can't be done through individual acts alone.
This came up for me shortly after reading an article suggesting that
not having kids was one of the best environmental decisions you could
make. My wife and I, at the time, had a son who had just passed away.
The thought (to me) that him dying was in some way a plus for the
environment was unthinkable. And I recognized that this was all driven
by the assumption that the only way we could improve our environment
was through individual acts.
I hope this isn't seen as off topic, because to me it's the same
impulse driving this: in our culture, there really isn't a choice
between guilt and innocence on our relationship with the natural world.
As much as stripping away the bad in ourselves is an important act, I
believe that it is even more important to help in building a culture of
justice.
Condolences to Rob.
This got me thinking. Among those who want kids, is there an environmentalist case for adoption? Obviously, I don't mean in terms of mandates or even over-suggestion, but just in terms of the logic of the thing.
Granted this is a really extreme example of the limits of "Is this racist?", but it pissed me off, and then made me really sad. I'm sure ?uestlove was half-joking. The accompanying brouhaha isn't very funny. I was debating with Kenyatta about this last night. For me, as an African-American, the key question isn't, "Do I believe some hypothetical black person might take this the wrong way?" but, "Do I seriously believe NBC was attempting to demean me?"
Maybe I'm the wrong person to ask about this. That menu sounds delicious to me. I get the point that the food is actually Southern and not "black." But I also think two things: 1.) There are assholes in the world who delight in being offensive. 2.) The presence of said assholes should not be license to presume offense, until otherwise disproven.
In a world where we presume offense, where we exclaim, "You're trying to insult me," as opposed to asking, "Do I have all the contextual facts?" this sort of thing is going to keep happening. And we will continue to be confronted with the absurdity of corporations apologizing to no one in particular, for the crime of listening to their black employees.
So allow me my moment of being shocked--shocked!--that Richard Shelby is seeking to elevate obstructionism to the level of performance art:
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on
at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate,
according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no
nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a
60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold...
According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama's nominees hostage
until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer
dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby
wants to move forward or else:
- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily:
"Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has
threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes
changes to a draft request for proposals." Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.
- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily:
"[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won't build" the
center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is
due to be based "at the Army's Redstone Arsenal."
You need 60 votes to break the hold. But you knew that already, right?
This is a very long post which I started while thinking about the debate around Henrietta Locks on this site. If you have other things to do, go do them. I'll be a little hurt. But I think, with some work, I'll get over it.
My first sense that losing weight would be hard came long before I actually began the process. It was the Spring of 2001, shortly after Samori was born. We were living in Delaware, but dreaming of New York. Kenyatta worked nights at the local paper. I had no job, save pounding out articles for cheap wages that nobody read. No matter. I was proud and gleeful whenever I saw it in print. But too I'd packed on some pounds--some during my college, some while while watching Kenyatta navigate a life-threatening pregnancy. "I'll knock it out at the gym," I thought, "Three or four months and the God will be his old high-school self."
I am now, almost a decade later, just entering my second month. In the intervening years, the God has been a lot of things, the old high school is not among them.
Anyway, that first hint came one afternoon when we decided to drive down to Baltimore and see the family. Usually on those drives we'd grab something on the road to keep from having to make breakfast that morning. But it was only then, resolving to get this done, that I really took note of the precise nature of our options, and the fact that if I were serious, I'd have to avoid all of them. I remember thinking about people (not like me) who worked long hours and spent more long hours in the car for a commute. I remember thinking about how the fast food options along the road fit into that system, how they were part of a broader thing, a broader method of production and consumption.
When you want to lose weight, smart people tell you that it isn't simply a matter of going to the gym more or eating low-fat cookies, it's a lifestyle change. We've heard that said so much that it's become a cliche. But it's essentially true. We change who we hang out with, where we spend our evenings, the time of our commute. A simple job switch can net 20 pounds. The overweight who've thought about their condition (those who consider it a condition) understand the folly of simply saying "I won't eat this and I'll work out more." It's so much bigger and so much more systemic.
And for me, in month two, it gets deeper everyday. Finding my way out has meant seriously grappling with what I eat and how I eat in ways beyond a calorie count. The aesthetics of slimness have never been enough for me. It'd be nice to look like the rock, but this is really about tossing the football to your grandkids, and then not bringing them into a unsustainable system of consumption that's warping the planet.
To call this an understanding misses the point--it's always about the good questions, instead of the certain answers. I probably shouldn't eat much beef, and when I eat it I should consult this website so that I know how it was killed, right? I should be suspicious of eggs, and look for cage-free, but sometimes cage-free is a con to lure in neophytes like me, right? I know that egg whites are good for me, but isn't there something wrong about dumping half the egg, right? And I love pineapples, but God knows what manner of abomination flew those beauties up from the tropics, right?
I don't understand half as much about this sort of thing as most people writing on the web. But I do understand the tremendous difficulty of getting conscious, as the brothers say, and thus trying to fulfill all my daily tax-paying responsibilities, while extricating the cog of myself from the wicked machine.
But more than that, I understand enough to be wary of inveighing against people who eat at McDonalds--or even McDonald's itself--of harshly interrogating the morality of flesh-eaters (I am, of course, among them.) It's not that any of this is wrong per se, so much as it's limited. When you're constantly naming people for their sins of consumption, it's very hard to get them to act against a system of consumption. More than that, it often misses the point of how hard it is to pull oneself out of the Matrix, and thus underestimates the Matrix, in that it assumes we can win by yelling.
Likewise, I think in my best writing here, in the writing that really matters, I've worked to steer us away from the reductive parlor game of "Is this/he/she racist?" It's useful to a point, but ultimately self-serving. It underestimates our demons and it underestimates how an entire system warped nearly every institution in this country, and continues to warp it to this day. What I'd rather we us understand is some sense of the big system, some sense of American white supremacy as mechanized racism.
Has Obama been a little feistier over the past week? Maybe it's because health care dominated the agenda, and he decided to take a backseat role. Ezra noted yesterday that when Obama highlighted that Village Voice headline "Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate," the Democrats laughed politely, but Obama didn't.
I reserve the right to be a nigger. --Aaron McGruder
One thing that that repeatedly rankles me when Judis makes his "white working class" critique of Obama, is that he never engages the populist prejudice he presumably wants Obama to overcome. I'm not sure that he even accurately names the prejudice--I don't like his broad sweeping terms.
But accepting them for the sake of argument, you get this undercurrent that it's somehow understandable that presumably non-racist white working class people would vote against someone because their parents, like, valued education and shit....
If we were talking about a group of black voters who refused to vote for someone because they aspired to be a lawyer or politician, we would be knee-deep in "black pathology" diatribes and Bill Cosby call-outs. Mo-fos would think it was the second Maafa. T
I get that Obama is a politician, and thus it's his job to make people vote for him. But I don't understand why anti-intellectualism among black people is pathological, and among white people is taken as evidence of working class roots.
I thought were done with this after the election. Evidently not. Here's John Judis:
Here is a fact: Barack Obama has trouble generating enthusiasm among
white working class voters. That's not because they are white. He would
have had trouble winning support among black working class voters if
they had been unable to identify with him because he was black. He has
trouble with working class voters because he appears to them as coming
from a different world, a different realm of experience, a different
class, if you like. And that's because he does.
Judis continues:
Obama's parents were professionals--his mother was an anthropology PhD
and his father was a Harvard-trained economist. How much money they
made was immaterial. His grandmother, who raised him in Hawaii, was a
bank vice-president. He went to a fancy private school and to
prestigious colleges (Occidental and Columbia) that turn out
professionals and managers. He clearly was not obsessed with making
money, but with performing a public service--yet that doesn't
distinguish him from other professionals or other Columbia graduates.
It does distinguish him from a working- or middle-class American for
whom being a civil rights lawyer or professor or politician is at best
a passing fantasy...
Yes, there have been some gifted politicians of an upper class or
professional background who have been able to do so. Some, like Bill
Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or Ronald Reagan, could draw upon their
working class childhoods; others, like Franklin Roosevelt or Edward
Kennedy, could evince a kind of upper-class paternalism. This made them
great politicians. It didn't necessarily make them great men or great
Americans. Barack Obama is, by any fair measure, a great American, and
he could turn out to be a great president. But he is not yet a great
politician. He has not been able to transcend the political limits of
his own social background. And that has been one of his problems as he
attempts to extricate America from the mess he inherited.
I don't really understand this. By Judis' own definition--professional parents, private schools, prestigious college, aspiration to be a politician--George W. Bush was a yuppie. I haven't ran the numbers, maybe Bush's yuppie background kept him from relating to the white working class also.
Judis then charges that Obama, as a yuppie, "has not been able to transcend the political limits of his social background." I call this moving the goal-posts. I think it's fair to say that in 2008, Judis thought those "limits" included winning the presidency, to say nothing of winning Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio.
I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way, but I think one of two things--and maybe both things--have to be true after the election. Obama, a black man among other things, actually did transcend his "social background" by winning in 2008. Or we need to stop ascribing near totemic power to the "white working class."
I often wonder if detailed shots of STDs and description of the
treatment along with free condoms and instructions on how to use them
would be more effective than 90% of sex ed programs.
I don't know. In terms of condom use, I think we can only control so much. That said, I think--speaking from personal experience--credibility is key. You may scare a few kids, but I think many more will see that you're intentionally trying to scare them, and thus doubt your motives. They may not say it that way, but I think that's the thought process.
Again, speaking for myself the mere word gonorrhea was scary to me. Having its effects described to me in plain English--and its method of detection, eff the swab test--was enough. U didn't need pictures, I was good.
Beyond that, I think we need to remember how often we, as adults, are ourselves sexually irresponsible. In this arena, the dumbest shit I did happened after I'd turned 18. Context is everything.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
