Came over through McCardle's link celebrating your Atlantic gig. Watched the video of you talking about your book. Awesome. I'm going to go buy your book for my Labor Day break reading.
By the way: Ludacris either wants Obama to lose or he's not smart. I'm going with Ludacris is stupid. O'Reilly (who has history with Ludacris) is going to go to town tonight on this with Wolfson and Lanny Davis. Oh joy....
They can't help themselves, with Obama it's their time to finally gloat on an achievement of substance. For many the victories of this election season are to be shared and the complex opinions and legacies that all of the "winners" bring with them will inevitable be exposed to the cold light of day, worts and all. It's unfair but Obama just has to deal with it.
I got a kick out of reading the comments underneath the article. I'm torn. On one hand, I want to groan and smack Luda upside his head. Hasn't everyone supporting Obama realized that anything they say or do will be held against Obama in the court of public idiocy? No one seems to be able to temper their tongues, or at least to keep Obama's name out of their mouth when they say something questionable.
At the same time, I hope this "denounce and reject trend" aka putting the Heisman on them joes, does not remain for long. Scarily enough, in the event that Obama does become president, it almost sounds as if "they" will call him to answer for everything a black person says, as if he really is the spokesman. I agree, Ta-Nehisi, that they should just ask Billy Dee and be done with it. Am I my brother's keeper? Sure...until he does something stupid...
The ensuing media flare-up is totally going to miss the context of this song being done for a mixtape and not as a legitimate part of the Obama campaign or even as an official release.
Is the Hillary line in bad taste? Sure. But do we really expect that Luda's going to develop a new found sense of the appropriate just because he made Obama the subject of a rhyme?
Maybe someone needs to do some sort of seminar for rappers who are newly motivated to address politics because of the historic nature of this presidential race. The rules are different and the stakes have gotten higher since the last time hip-hop really cared about such things. The internet just fans the flames further.
I suspect it's a youth thing. The b-word is used frequently in popular culture and many of the younger black Obama supporters I know were so pissed at Hillary that calling her that (or worse) was a frequent occurrence.
When one of my female friends offhandedly referred to HRC as a bitch, and I objected, on the grounds that a) we don't know her, and b) it's kinda sexist, she responded: "Please. I'll call that bitch a bitch all day long." True story.
With that said, the Obama statement was decent. He's good at the wrist-slap.
Also: did anyone criticize Tina Fey for saying "bitch is the new black" on SNL?
Also, also: those lyrics are just generally lame, even for Luda. I think he was actually censoring himself...
What burns my ass about this is that O'Reilly and the rest of the right-wing ass-clown brigade can talk madness all day long and McCain never has to address their comments or denounce them. Obama, on the other hand, is held to a totally different standard. Someone Black starts speaking some nonsense and the first thing MSM does is go to Obama's campaign for a denouncement.
Yeah, Luda was kinda stupid to put Barack in a jackpot like that but noone sweats Bush or McCain when Ted Nugent tells someone to "suck on his machine gun".
Hip Hop can't stop just because Obama is around. Personally, I love Luda etc, but at the same, if I were running 4 office, I wouldn't be embracing him or the rest of "hip hop" entity as its presented now.
Now you and me and people privy to it can see the nuance etc wherever it exists in the music, but do the kind of voters Obama has to reach out to in a general see that?
Note to Ludacris: This is not a hip-hop feud. Gloat AFTER you win, dumbass.
Also, calling HRC a bitch publicly is not in bad taste, it is misogynistic. Women calling other women bitches (in private) is different from when men say it, especially when they say it in such a public forum. In my opinion, it is not the place of men to throw that word around so publicly and so freely, in the same way people who aren't black shouldn't be going around saying the n-word ever.
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 
Hey,
Came over through McCardle's link celebrating your Atlantic gig. Watched the video of you talking about your book. Awesome. I'm going to go buy your book for my Labor Day break reading.
By the way: Ludacris either wants Obama to lose or he's not smart. I'm going with Ludacris is stupid. O'Reilly (who has history with Ludacris) is going to go to town tonight on this with Wolfson and Lanny Davis. Oh joy....
They can't help themselves, with Obama it's their time to finally gloat on an achievement of substance. For many the victories of this election season are to be shared and the complex opinions and legacies that all of the "winners" bring with them will inevitable be exposed to the cold light of day, worts and all. It's unfair but Obama just has to deal with it.
I got a kick out of reading the comments underneath the article. I'm torn. On one hand, I want to groan and smack Luda upside his head. Hasn't everyone supporting Obama realized that anything they say or do will be held against Obama in the court of public idiocy? No one seems to be able to temper their tongues, or at least to keep Obama's name out of their mouth when they say something questionable.
At the same time, I hope this "denounce and reject trend" aka putting the Heisman on them joes, does not remain for long. Scarily enough, in the event that Obama does become president, it almost sounds as if "they" will call him to answer for everything a black person says, as if he really is the spokesman. I agree, Ta-Nehisi, that they should just ask Billy Dee and be done with it. Am I my brother's keeper? Sure...until he does something stupid...
The ensuing media flare-up is totally going to miss the context of this song being done for a mixtape and not as a legitimate part of the Obama campaign or even as an official release.
Is the Hillary line in bad taste? Sure. But do we really expect that Luda's going to develop a new found sense of the appropriate just because he made Obama the subject of a rhyme?
Maybe someone needs to do some sort of seminar for rappers who are newly motivated to address politics because of the historic nature of this presidential race. The rules are different and the stakes have gotten higher since the last time hip-hop really cared about such things. The internet just fans the flames further.
I suspect it's a youth thing. The b-word is used frequently in popular culture and many of the younger black Obama supporters I know were so pissed at Hillary that calling her that (or worse) was a frequent occurrence.
When one of my female friends offhandedly referred to HRC as a bitch, and I objected, on the grounds that a) we don't know her, and b) it's kinda sexist, she responded: "Please. I'll call that bitch a bitch all day long." True story.
With that said, the Obama statement was decent. He's good at the wrist-slap.
Also: did anyone criticize Tina Fey for saying "bitch is the new black" on SNL?
Also, also: those lyrics are just generally lame, even for Luda. I think he was actually censoring himself...
And that Huffington Post "translation" was amusing in places, too.
cannon cannonnn
What burns my ass about this is that O'Reilly and the rest of the right-wing ass-clown brigade can talk madness all day long and McCain never has to address their comments or denounce them. Obama, on the other hand, is held to a totally different standard. Someone Black starts speaking some nonsense and the first thing MSM does is go to Obama's campaign for a denouncement.
Yeah, Luda was kinda stupid to put Barack in a jackpot like that but noone sweats Bush or McCain when Ted Nugent tells someone to "suck on his machine gun".
Hip Hop can't stop just because Obama is around. Personally, I love Luda etc, but at the same, if I were running 4 office, I wouldn't be embracing him or the rest of "hip hop" entity as its presented now.
Now you and me and people privy to it can see the nuance etc wherever it exists in the music, but do the kind of voters Obama has to reach out to in a general see that?
seems to have been another blind spot 4 Barack.
Note to Ludacris: This is not a hip-hop feud. Gloat AFTER you win, dumbass.
Also, calling HRC a bitch publicly is not in bad taste, it is misogynistic. Women calling other women bitches (in private) is different from when men say it, especially when they say it in such a public forum. In my opinion, it is not the place of men to throw that word around so publicly and so freely, in the same way people who aren't black shouldn't be going around saying the n-word ever.