PAPA ROBBIE.COM

D'Angelo LIVE!!!

2012-01-30T19:42:00.001-08:00

DJ Jazzy Jeff In The Mix!!!

2012-01-28T22:24:00.001-08:00

Symphonic Soul!!!

2012-01-25T19:21:00.001-08:00

SA-ROC: Samurai Soliloquy

2012-01-07T20:30:00.001-08:00

Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism

2011-12-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

by Dr. Monica Williams.

What is racial colorblindness?

Racial issues are often uncomfortable to discuss and rife with stress and controversy. Many ideas have been advanced to address this sore spot in the American psyche. Currently, the most pervasive approach is known as colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity.

At its face value, colorblindness seems like a good thing — really taking MLK to task on his call to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity.

However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism.
Problems with the colorblind approach

Racism? Strong words, yes, but let's look the issue straight in its partially unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, Whites, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.

Let's break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = "People of color — we don't see you (at least not that bad ‘colored' part)." As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don't want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn't talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can't talk about it, you can't understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.
Colorblindness is not the answer

Whites tend to view colorblindness as helpful to people of color by asserting that race does not matter (Tarca, 2005). But in America, most underrepresented minorities will explain that race does matter, as it affects opportunities, perceptions, income, and so much more. When race-related problems arise, colorblindness tends to individualize conflicts and shortcomings, rather than examining the larger picture with cultural differences, stereotypes, and values placed into context. Instead of resulting from an enlightened (albeit well-meaning) position, colorblindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness (Tarca, 2005). White people can guiltlessly subscribe to colorblindness because they are largely unaware of how race affects people of color and American society as a whole.

Colorblindness in a psychotherapeutic relationship

How might colorblindness cause harm? Here's an example close to home for those of you who are psychologically-minded. In the not-so-distant past, in psychotherapy a client's racial and ethnic remarks were viewed as a defensive shift away from important issues, and the therapist tended to interpret this as resistance (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991). However, such an approach hinders the exploration of conflicts related to race, ethnicity, and culture. The therapist doesn't see the whole picture, and the client is left frustrated.

A colorblind approach effectively does the same thing. Blind means not being able to see important things. I don't want to be blind. I want to see things clearly, even if they make me uncomfortable. As a therapist I need to be able to hear and "see" everything my client is communicating on many different levels. I can't afford to be blind to anything. Would you want to see a surgeon who operated blindfolded? Of course not. Likewise, a therapist should not be blinded either, especially to something as critical as a person's culture or racial identity. By encouraging the exploration of racial and cultural concepts, the therapist can provide a more authentic opportunity to understand and resolve the client's problems (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991).

Nonetheless, I have encountered many fellow therapists who ascribe to a colorblind philosophy. They ignore race or pretend its personal, social, and historical effects don't exist. This approach ignores the incredibly salient experience of being stigmatized by society and represents an empathetic failure on the part of the therapist. Colorblindness does not foster equality or respect; it merely relieves the therapist of his or her obligation to address important racial differences and difficulties.
Multiculturalism is better than blindness

Research has shown that hearing colorblind messages predict negative outcomes among Whites, such as greater racial bias and negative affect; likewise colorblind messages cause stress in ethnic minorities, resulting in decreased cognitive performance (Holoien et al., 2011). Given how much is at stake, we can no longer afford to be blind. It's time for change and growth. It's time to see.

The alternative to colorblindness is multiculturalism, an ideology that acknowledges, highlights, and celebrates ethnoracial differences. It recognizes that each tradition has something valuable to offer. It is not afraid to see how others have suffered as a result of racial conflict or differences.

So, how do we become multicultural? The following suggestions would make a good start (McCabe, 2011):

recognizing and valuing differences,
teaching and learning about differences, and
fostering personal friendships and organizational alliances

Moving from colorblindness to multiculturalism is a process of change, and change is never easy, but we can't afford to stay the same.

References

Comas-Diaz, L., and Jacobsen, F. M. (1991). Clinical Ethnocultural Transference and Countertransference in the Therapeutic Dyad. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 61(3), 392-402.

Fryberg, S. M. (2010). When the World Is Colorblind, American Indians Are Invisible: A Diversity Science Approach. Psychological Inquiry, 21(2), 115-119.

Holoien, D. S., and Shelton, J. N. (October 2011). You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.010.

Tarca, K. (2005). Colorblind in Control: The Risks of Resisting Difference Amid Demographic Change. Educational Studies, 38(2), 99-120.

McCabe, J. (2011). Doing Multiculturalism: An Interactionist Analysis of the Practices of a Multicultural Sorority. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40 (5), 521-549.

The Fugees LIVE!!!

2011-12-12T18:01:00.001-08:00

Fire Burning!

2011-12-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Yellowman Live At Reggae Sunsplash

2011-08-16T19:57:00.001-07:00

This is the performance that I saw as a child that got me hooked on his music.

Vintage King Yellowman

2011-08-16T19:54:00.001-07:00

Live onstage

RISE and SHINE

2011-08-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

RISE and SHINE

By Robert Ellington –“Papa Robbie”

My life changed forever at 9:32 a.m. on Valentine’s Day 2009, when I became a father.

My wife delivered a healthy baby boy, and we named him Elijah Paul Ellington, after his paternal and maternal great-grandfathers, respectively. Since Elijah was a few weeks early and delivered by Caesarean section, we spent a few days in the hospital so the doctors could monitor him and make sure my wife, Erica, was OK. Everything seemed to be going well.

About two days after coming home, Erica complained of fatigue, but we thought nothing of it because, after all, she just had just given birth. When she started having trouble breathing, I left Elijah in the care of my parents and took her to the emergency room. My mother is a retired nurse who specialized in newborn babies. Talk about a blessing! As it turned out, Erica had developed some complications that weren’t detected during her initial hospital stay.

Erica spent close to a month in the hospital, and, while she was recovering, I had a few days and nights with Elijah. I had to learn a whole lot on the fly; I must say, it was like baby boot camp. I learned what each cry meant and how to hold him just right. I figured out what sounds would soothe him and how to swaddle him to help him sleep longer. My mother helped me so much by taking care of him and showing me what I should do. My father also changed Elijah’s diapers and looked after him. It was a stressful time for sure, but it gave me a better understanding of how difficult single parenting must be.

My experience also brought me closer to my son. I believe I’m more in tune with him than I ever would have been if we hadn’t had that time together. If things had worked out otherwise, I probably would have been the occasional diaper changer and once-in-a-while formula mixer. But before I realized it, I was doing things I had never imagined I would do. Changing diapers became second nature and consoling him wasn’t the daunting task it once appeared to be. And when Erica returned home, I had to step back and let her figure out what I already had learned. I gave her hints here and there, but I allowed her to get a little boot camp action as well.

I’m not a fan of men who brag about taking care of their own children. In my eyes, that’s equivalent to someone boasting about bathing every day – it’s what you’re supposed to do! You don’t deserve an award for being responsible. There’s a misconception that a man’s responsibility where his child is concerned is all about monetary support so that the baby has food, clothing and diapers. But fatherhood is so much more. Elijah is two years old, and he’s already imitating my behavior. It is my responsibility to guide him from maleness to manhood.

A male is a biological entity whose essence is described by no more and no less than his biology. Beyond maleness is boyhood, a stage of life that comes with discipline. When he is able to say to himself, “I will not do this because it is bad,” he has a basic level of discipline.

After boyhood, we move into manhood. What separates the boy from the man is a higher level of discipline that frees the boy from being driven by impulses tied to “maleness.” The boy takes his budding rationality and is able to expand his consciousness. Dr. Na’im Akbar writes in his book, “Visions For Black Men”: “In fact, it is critical that he should be guided in the use of his yet immature reasoning so that it doesn’t get entrapped in the form of boyishness. …”

Some members of our communities are legally adults, but mentally they are stuck in the boyhood stage. My role models weren’t on TV; they were in my house. My father, mother and older sister combined to provide me with an awesome blueprint. My father is a tall man with a big presence. Genetics didn’t give me his height, but people tell me that, like him, I have a large presence. He was my guide and, before I realized it, I sounded and acted just like him. My mother gave me her gift of patience. My sister taught me the importance of respecting womanhood.

I was paying attention. Some young people suffer from “daddy damage” because of a bad or nonexistent relationship with their father. Boys learn how to treat women by watching their fathers or a father figure. Girls learn about relationships by watching the men in their lives, which can be difficult if there is no positive male role model around. The youngsters in some of our communities are paying attention, as well, but, unfortunately, they aren’t always getting the information they need from a solid family unit. Fatherhood isn’t about being a DNA donor; it’s about shaping the lives of your offspring.

Chuck D summed it up best for me in the song “Rise N Shine”:

“Make no mistake, we don't shake or stutter
So heed the word of the brothers
Who makes a boy into a man
It's the job of another man
Who knows his role as a father
He bothers to give his son his soul
And pass it on, to never front
Cause papa don't raise no punks
Got to make it known and to pass it down
Yeah, sounds like a job for the brother man now
Got to help a mother for me
Each one teach one, if you can't find one
Talk to the little ones
And you'll see they'll listen
To fill the missin’

Peace, to rise and shine.”

The Bible vs. The Bible?

2011-08-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting huh?

The Bible vs. The Bible!!!!

The creation story

GENESIS 1: The Seven Days Creation Story

Day 1 - Light and darkness: day and night
Day 2 - A "vault" separating the 'waters' that make up the oceans and the (blue) sky
Day 3 - Earth, followed by plants
Day 4 - The Sun, Moon and stars (as calendrical and navigational aids)
Day 5 - Animals
Day 6 - Humans (both sexes at the same time - many of them, apparently)
Day 7 - A day of rest

Note that there are "days", "evenings", and "mornings" before the Sun was created.

GENESIS 2: The Story of Adam in Eden

First, God made earth and heaven.
Then he placed Adam on an otherwise lifeless Earth.
Next he made plants grow in Eden, including the trees of life and of knowledge of good and evil.
Then he placed Adam in this garden.
Only then did he create animals.
Finally, he made Eve from Adam's rib. (The rest is history - or so literalists would say.)

The current scholarly hypothesis as to the Pentateuch's origins is that the divergent stories of different Hebrew tribes were put together at a comparatively late stage. GENESIS 1 is thought to embody the 'Priestly' tradition, GENESIS 2 the 'Yahwistic' (so-called because God is called 'Yahweh', rather than being referred to as 'Elohim', which is a plural literally translated as "the Gods").
Should we own slaves?

* LEVITICUS 25:45-46 "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, . . . and they shall be your possession . . . they shall be your bondmen forever."
* GENESIS 9:25 "And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."
* EXODUS 21:2,7 "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. . . . And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the manservants do."
* JOEL 3:8 "And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it."
* LUKE 12:47,48 [Jesus speaking] "And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes."
* COLOSSIANS 3:22 "Servants, obey in all things your masters."

vs.

* ISAIAH 58:6 "Undo the heavy burdens . . . let the oppressed go free, . . . break every yoke."
* MATTHEW 23:10 "Neither be ye called Masters: for one is your Master, even Christ."

In the American civil war, churches cited the numerous pro-slavery verses in the Bible as justification. And indeed, according to the Bible, slavery is clearly justified as there are only a very few, highly ambiguous, anti-slavery quotes and many emphatic statements in favour of slavery. The word servant comes from the original Greek word for slave - this is just some creative translation.
Should we steal?

* EXODUS 20:15 "Thou shalt not steal."
* LEVITICUS 19:13 "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him."

vs.

* EXODUS 3:22 "And ye shall spoil the Egyptians."
* EXODUS 12:35-36 "And they spoiled [plundered, NRSV] the Egyptians."
* LUKE 19:29-34 "[Jesus] sent two of his disciples, Saying, Go ye into the village . . . ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. . . . And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him."

God good to all, or just a few?

PSALMS 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

JEREMIAH 13:14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the Lord: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.
How long was Jesus in the tomb?

MATTHEW 12:40 has Jesus prophesying that he will spend "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth", and MARK 10:34 has "after three days (meta treis emeras) he will rise again". As far as I can see from a quick look, the prophecies have "after three days", but the post-resurrection narratives have "on the third day".
What was Jesus given to drink?

MATTHEW 27:34 says vinegar. MARK 15:23 says it was wine with myrhh.
War or Peace?

EXODUS 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name.

ROMANS 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Is strong drink OK?

See PROVERBS 31:6,7 But... see JOHN 2:11-11
For or against me?

MATTHEW 12:30 He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.
(ie. against)

MARK 9:40 For he that is not against us is on our part.
(ie. for)

LUKE 9:50 And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.
(ie. for)
Which first--beasts or man?

GENESIS 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

GENESIS 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

GENESIS 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

GENESIS 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Is it folly to be wise or not?

PROVERBS 4:7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

ECCLESIASTES 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that in- creaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

1 CORINTHIANS1:19: "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and wil bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
Should good deeds be publicised or not?

MATTHEW 5:16 says "In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." (NIV)

MATTHEW 6:3-4, though, says "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secert. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (NIV)
Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?

ACTS 9:7 "And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man."

ACTS 22:9 "And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."
Who killed Saul?

SAMUEL 1 31:4 Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it.

SAMUEL 1 31:5 And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise upon his sword, and died with him.

SAMUEL 1 31:6 So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.

SAMUEL 2 1:15 And David called one of the young men, and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And he smote him that he died.
When second coming?

MATTHEW 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

MARK 13:30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.

LUKE 21:32 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.

See also 1 THESSALONIANS 4:15-18

More a contradiction with facts, this - as far as I can tell, we're still waiting.
Ascend to heaven

"And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." (2 KINGS 2:11)

"No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, ... the Son of Man." (JOHN 3:13)
Is (human or other) sacrifice the way to go?

* Deuteronomy 12:31 "Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods."

vs.

* GENESIS 22:2 "And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."
* EXODUS 22:29 "For thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors; the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me."
* JUDGES 11:30-39 "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon . . . and the Lord delivered them into his hands. . . . And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: . . . And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed."
* 2 SAMUEL 21:8-14 "But the king [David] took the two sons of Rizpah . . . and the five sons of Michal . . . and he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest . . . And after that God was intreated for the land."
* HEBREWS 10:10-12 " . . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ . . . But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God."
* 1 CORINTHIANS 5:7 " . . . For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us."

Is God omnipotent?

* JEREMIAH 32:27 "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?
* MATTHEW 19:26 "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."

vs.

* JUDGES 1:19 "And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

Did Michal have children?

* II SAMUEL 6:23 "Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death."

But...

* II SAMUEL 21:8 "But the king took the two sons of Rizpah . . . and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul."

When was Jesus born?

According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). Herod died in March of 4 B.C., so Jesus had to have been born BEFORE that time. According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This census took place in 6 AD and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death.
How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign?

22 in 2 KINGS 8:26

42 in 2 CHRONICLES 22:2
How old was Jehoiachin when he became King?

8 in CHRONICLES 36:9

18 in 2 KINGS 24:8
The number of animals in the ark

GENESIS 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

GENESIS 7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, GEN 7:9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
Hares

LEVITICUS 11:6 And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.

This may not contradict anything the Bible says, but it does clash with reality - hares don't chew cud.
The shape of the earth

ISAIAH 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

MATTHEW 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

As everyone now knows, the earth is spehrical (actually, ovaloid), so you cannot see its entire surface from any one place. Greece, Crete, Egypt and Middle Eastern kingdoms could not have been seen from even "an exceeding high mountain."
Should we swear an oath?

HEBREWS 6:13-17 says "For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself . . . for men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath." But JAMES 5:12 clearly says ". . . swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation."
The sins of the father

ISAIAH 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.

DEUTERONOMY 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the chil- dren, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
Was Jesus a peaceful man?

* JOHN 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."
* ACTS 10:36 "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ."
* LUKE 2:14 " . . . on earth peace, good will toward men."

vs.

* MATTHEW 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."
* LUKE 22:36 "Then said he unto them, . . . he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."

Does God change his mind?

* MALACHI 3:6 "For I am the Lord; I change not."
Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent."
* EZEKIEL 24:14 "I the Lord have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent."
* JAMES 1:17 " . . . the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

vs.

* EXODUS 32:14 "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."
* GENESIS 6:6,7 "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth . . . for it repenteth me that I have made him."
* JONAH 3:10 ". . . and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."

How are we saved?

"For by grace are we saved through faith...not of works" EPHESIANS 2:8-9.

"...and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works" REVELATION 20:13.

"Ye see then that by works a man is justified, not by faith only. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also" JAMES 2:26
What happened to Judas?

MATTHEW 27:5 states that he threw down his silver, ran from the temple, and hanged himself. ACTS 1:16-19 states, however, that he bought some land with his money, and that he had a fall, causing him "to burst open in the middle" so that his "bowels gushed out. And it became known to all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akaldama, that is, Field of Blood."
Jesus' last words on the cross

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [PSALMS 22:1] ...Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost." (MATTHEW 27:46-50)
But . . .
"And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:" and having said thus, he gave up the ghost." (LUKE 23:46)
But . . .
"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished:" and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." (JOHN 19:30)

This is clearly a folk legend - the operative word being legend - in the making.
Is God cruel, destructive and unmerciful or good, kind and merciful?

"I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy." (JEREMIAH 13:14) "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling."

"The Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." (JAMES 5:11)

"For his mercy endureth forever." (1 CHRONICLES 16:34)

"The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." (PSALMS 145:9)

"God is love." (1 JOHN 4:16)

"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it." (JOEL 3:8)

Reggae Season

2011-08-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

We had a great show with King Yellow. He even called me up onstage to perform with him. I'm still on a high. To have a legendary figure recognize the work that you've put in to put good vibes out and make good music is awesome. This reggae season was great. The Dubplates band continues to destroy stages and send people home happy. Anyone who thinks my riddim band ain't got soul....is WRONG.

8-8-11...It's on

2011-08-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

Come on out and party with King Yellowman and the mighty Dubplates Band. Vintage Dancehall Vibes....

BOOM!

2011-08-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

King Yellow!

2011-08-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

We're opening for King Yellow again this year...Peep the tribute that I put together via podcast for my friend and musical mentor. Download if you wanna listen later. Feedback is always welcome!

http://paparobbie.podomatic.com/entry/2011-08-01T20_17_03-07_00

King Yellowman & Papa Robbie

2010-07-01T22:08:00.000-07:00

A moment that I will never forget. Bless up Yellow!

Yellowman Show

2010-06-30T18:08:00.001-07:00

Last night we tore it out of the frame! Yellowman then came on and tore the house down! A night to remember for sure! Dubplates, you did ya thing!

LIVE @ SPOLETO

2010-06-10T20:09:00.001-07:00

I will be performing live at Unity (Spoleto Finale) on Saturday June, 12 2010...5-6:30 on Brittlebank Park near Joe Riley Stadium..absolutely free!
See ya there!

Always Yellow

2010-05-12T20:28:00.000-07:00

The legendary King Yellowman (Winston Foster) is returning to Charleston on June 29th. Once again, I have the pleasure of opening the show. People that know me know of Yellow being my musical mentor and as the reason that I began doing reggae in the first place. It runs deep on many levels. Yellow was always a kind of outsider. He was orphaned as a baby (in Jamaica) and faced all kinds of rejection and was met with scorn because of his albinism. I don't have those issues, but I felt inspired by someone who could endure all of that and still become a legendary reggae entertainer. The 3rd gig (of my career) that I did was opening for Yellowman and I was nervous as hell. Time went on, and we opened a few more shows...I always looked to see if he was watching, but after about 5 shows I finally asked if he saw me and he would say "no, me nah see you". Fast forward a year later and he was listening and watching and sent for me to speak with him. He said to me, "Robbie, that song 'Just Like That' is a wicked song...you need to record that". I nearly wet my pants...the guy who inspired me to do this in the first place likes one of my songs! Oh my GOD! With the help of his then bass player Derrick Barnett we recorded the song. It became a staple during my shows. My whole style uses Yellowman as a blueprint.....In 1996, the unthinkable happened in my own hometown the great Yellowman called me onstage to do a song WITH HIM...I don't recall what I said but my bandmates told me that I was giving Yellow's band (Sagittarius Band) orders as if they were my band. I had watched HOURS of video with all kinds of artists performing in front of that band and now I was one of them...I was in heaven! That spoke of some serious respect. For Yellow to invite me onstage and give me shoutouts during performances when I open the show gives me goosebumps. Yellow has been slowed by cancer (originally given 6 months to live in 1985), he's still doing it. Sure his voice isn't nearly as strong as it was in the 80s and 90s....but his energy onstage is matched by very few....Always an inspiration, always Yellow!

Open Letter To Tyler Perry

2009-09-14T15:07:00.001-07:00

Open Letter To Tyler Perry....

Dear Mr. Perry,

I appreciate your commitment to giving Black folks jobs in front of and behind the camera, having opened the largest Black owned film production studio in the country in Atlanta last year. You own the rights to all of your films, which is not something most filmmakers can say. Your love and concern for Black people is undeniable, as proved yet again when you sent a group of Philly children and their families to Disneyland after they had been the victims of racism at a local community pool. You have also introduced generations of young viewers to some of our most treasured and important artists such as Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson, who have all appeared in your films. And while they are often infused with over-the-top humor, your films contain positive messages about self-worth, love and respect.

However, my feelings about your work are somewhat complicated, as is the case for a lot of my fellow Black artists/intellectuals. Much of what we see in your films, particularly the Medea series and your two TV shows 'Meet The Browns' and 'House Of Payne', is in step with decades old stereotypes of bumbling, emasculated Black male buffoons and crass, sassy Black women. To be completely honest, my circles of friends (many of whom enjoy your film work) find the TBS shows to be wholly unwatchable. As Spike Lee said recently "As African-Americans, we're not one monolithic group", thus there is no problem with having diverse images of us on the screen, "But at the same time, for me, the imaging is troubling and it hearkens back to 'Amos 'n Andy'."

As much as I would like to support your series, especially given the complete dearth of Black shows on television, I simply cannot. In fact, it is the lack of other Black programming that makes the problems with 'Meet the Browns' and 'House of Payne' so glaring and painful. While both network television and cable have been cruel to Blacks over the past few years, least we not forget that we have a long list of critically acclaimed Black television shows in our past that did not toe the line between comedy and coonery. Among them: 'The Jeffersons', '227', 'Amen', 'The Cosby Show', 'A Different World', 'Roc', 'Living Single', 'The Bernie Mac Show' (the only thing resembling a direct descendant to 'The Cosby Show's' family sitcom legacy thus far), etc. There is no reason to believe that Black audiences are less sophisticated in 2009 than they were in 1989 and that we would not be receptive to a show that resembled one of the ones that I mentioned. While I am tempted to watch your shows because they are pretty much the only Black ones on television, I don't want to send the message to networks and advertisers that I as a Black consumer find those images to be acceptable.

By not submitting your films for pre-release review by critics, you have sent a strong message to the White guardians of Hollywood that you do not require their approval to have a hit film and that is admirable. You notably attacked a negative review by Roger Ebert of 'Diary of a Mad Black Woman', stating that he did not understand the film because it wasn't for him. I agree that cultural ownership of our stories is important and that what we experience as a people cannot always be appreciated or understood by others. However, I and many other Black viewers have expressed some of the very same attitudes about your work that Ebert and other White critics articulated. You'll have a very poignant story going and then here is this jarring, over-the-top Medea character in the middle of it all. It's akin to giving a child candy in order to make them take their vitamins and I find it to be a bit insulting.

In most of your films, you are a lead actor, the screenwriter, director and executive producer. While you are obviously a man of many talents, know that hubris is the downfall of many a great man. Given that there are so few opportunities for Black artists in Hollywood, you would best use your power for the greater good of our people by removing some of the many hats that you wear and distributing them amongst your artistic peers. One of the biggest, and oft-ignored, criticisms of your work has been the writing. You are obviously capable of creating these very engaging and unique stories and in the hands of a masterful writer, one of your films could silence all the critics and naysayers.

As far as the Medea character goes, I won't say much as you have again recently expressed your desire to stop portraying her. I'd be lying if the gun-toting, pot smoking granny never gave me a chuckle and the character certainly has a lot of heart and something very earnest about her. However, I can't help but to feel that through her, the country has had the opportunity to laugh at one of the most important members of the Black community: the "Big Mama", the beloved grandmother. And while our grannies are often these boisterous, over-the-top figures, I just can't quite get with seeing Big Mama completely desexualized and played by a 6'3 man with prosthetic breasts flopping in the wind. Our grandmothers deserve much more than that.

At this point, you have created an empire on the foundation of love, Christianity and concern, but also stereotype and Black pathologies. Mr. Perry, you are in a position now where if you be so willing, you could completely revolutionize the world of Black film. I appreciate the step that you and your friend Oprah have taken in helping to fund the soon-to-be released Lee Daniels film 'Precious' and I hope that you continue to support the work of other Black directors. Please bring both fledgling and seasoned Black writers and directors to your studios and use the many tools that you have worked so hard for so that the next young artist doesn't have struggle as you did to get his voice heard. There is so much talent within our ranks and you are one of the few folks in a position to get that talent in people's homes.

I beg of you, Mr. Perry- stop dismissing the critics as haters and realize that Black people are in great need of new and honest images of us in the media. We have had men in dresses who weren't actual drag performers and we've had bumbling buffoons and loud, aggressive mammies. I know you have more, because we are more and YOU are more. It is obvious that your people will be loyal to you and support you no matter what. So do right by us. I think you love us enough to do just that.

Sincerely,
Sister Toldja

The Washington Redskins

2009-09-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

I will never understand why anyone with a HINT of historical knowledge would ever pull for a team called the Washington "Redskins"....It's bad enough that a racial slur towards Native Americans is okay as long as it's an NFL team according to fans, but the fact that it was the LAST NFL franchise to integrate (after PRESSURE from other team owners) makes the whole organization stink in my eyes. Ironically the team is the only team so far to win a Superbowl with an African-American quarterback (Doug Williams)... Okay, so the old racist owner is long dead and now a Jewish guy owns the team....does he change the name? Of course not...because longtime fans wouldn't approve if he ever tried to do something like that. The history of the franchise and name of the team disgust me and anyone who knows that history and still pulls for a team with a degrading name like that needs to look deep into themselves...it's not "just" a name. I hope the franchise never wins another game. That's just my opinion.

Some declarations from me and my bottle of Wood Chuck Cider…..

2009-08-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

1. Guys that point at the camera and pull a make-believe trigger are lame.
2. Beyonce is overrated
3. Biggie wasn’t the “greatest” MC of all time. That MC doesn’t exist.
4. Lil Wayne is gay for kissing another guy on the lips…and he’s overrated.
5. Funerals have little to do with the deceased.
6. Women are socialized to hate each other.
7. Talk radio is to journalism what pro wrestling is to sports.
8. Rationalization is more addictive than crack.
9. The music industry as we know it is dying…and that’s a good thing
10. Control of anger, sexual desire, money, food, and sleep will guarantee success.
11. Dumbed down is what the masses like.
12. Janet Jackson can’t sing
13. Michael Jackson lip-synched his “concerts” since 1987.
14. Mariah Carey, Beyonce, and R. Kelly all lip-synch “in concert”
15. Stevie Wonder needs to have his head shaven BALD…let it go man!
16. Religion has always been political.
17. Mainstream rap is homoerotic and misogynistic. (see # 4)
18. Prisons are BIG BUSINESS.
19. Some “churches” are BIG BUSINESS
20. I enjoy creating cognitive dissonance in others.
21. Most guys who work out do it to impress women or other men…not for health reasons.
22. All “holy” books should be free
23. The “Willie Lynch” letter is NOT REAL.
24. Money is abstract.
25. BET = Garbage
26. People are truly not ready to have an honest dialogue about race in this country.
27. Music has energy…we need to be careful what we allow our young people to hear.
28. Polygamy makes more sense than a “baby daddy” with 3 or 4 “baby mamas”.
29. People who have to buys lots of shiny things are dim within.
30. Women who crave diamonds make me cringe. Diamonds are not a scarce as they would like you to believe….and people are dying for them.
31. Most people are comfortable being lied to as long as their way of life isn't compromised.
32. Boys are just as sensitive as girls, but are socialized to “not cry”…these emotions manifest themselves in other ways.
33. Michael Jackson was mentally ill.
34. Many people are confused when asked if they believe in pre-destination or free will.
35. Drug dealers are rodents who should be destroyed.
36. Not everyone that doesn’t like you is jealous of you.
37. People who judge their success based on the ill will of others are childish.
38. Incest happens WAY MORE than most people realize.
39. People who call others “haters” for criticizing something lack emotional range and critical thinking skills.
40. Girls are often socialized to “barter” sex for “stuff”.
41. There is a HUGE double standard when it comes to boys & girls and their sexual behavior. A boy “sews his oats” and the girl is “fast”.
42. A man knows what type of woman he will marry even if he doesn’t consciously know it.
43. Reality shows are LAZY and lack creativity
44. They lip-synch on American Idol
45. Technology is actually making us dumber.
46. Condoms don’t protect you from EVERYTHING.
47. God is too big to fit into one religion.
48. I’m sure that Tyler Perry means well, but his methods hark back to minstrel shows.
49. Instead of focusing on how smart kids are, we should think about HOW they’re smart.
50. The War on Drugs was a joke.

The Misogyny Continues...

2009-07-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

by Jennifer McLune

Author’s Note: The following essay represents my attempt at articulating a response to Kid Cudi’s “Make Her Say (Poke Her Face),” featuring Common and Kanye West. I’d like to be honest in stating upfront that, during the process of writing this piece I only listened to the song and read over its lyrics on an absolutely-as-needed basis. The words & the images these contempt-ridden lyrics created in my mind left me feeling physically sick and emotionally depleted, even at times to the point of being traumatized.

As a female listener, one willing to allow herself to really hear this song’s words and take them to heart, the message was painfully clear: women like dick; we like it violently shoved in our faces, and, according to Common at least, we want oral sex forced upon us, however brutally men see fit to give it. We even enjoy having a man’s penis shoved down our throats, pushed up our mouths, literally rammed through our faces so far and with so much force that a penetration of the internal matter of our skulls occurs, i.e. the man hits “brain” with his dick. According to Common, Kanye and Kid Cudi, some women enjoy this kind of brutal, body punishing oral sex; they can learn how to beg, not only to be used as receptacles for men’s semen, but to be violated to the point of physical injury. Having to deal with this type of pure, unmitigated misogyny, and needing to think about it for an extended period of time in order to write about it made the completion of this piece extremely difficult. I enlisted the help of another radical feminist, Stephanie Cleveland, whose support and contributions in editing and writing spared me the ordeal of having to complete this essay all alone.

When the song “I Poke Her Face” was first brought to my attention, I thought that, if nothing else, at least Common’s “consciousness pimping” would finally being exposed. I imagined the singer would no longer be able to hide behind what we his listening public have so long pretended he’s about; this songs lyrics seemed to make it painfully clear who Common really is, and has in fact always been: a consciousness pimp who likes and expects to get my dick sucked by “stripper bitches,” just like any other woman-hating guy. Common seemed to be indisputably articulating that sentiment in the song, but leave it to one of his male fans, DC area poet and activist Kenneth Carroll, to dissent with a comment that is not only unoriginal, but also does exactly what Common and Kanye must have banked on—it demonstrates how their fans will dismiss any song, even one this overtly hateful, as a mere “inconsistency” in their struggle to be better men, certainly not an overt manifestations of the sadistic, full-blown misogynist these men really and truly are. Carroll writes:

I like Common, but this song reminds me of the Gil Scott Heron admonition to rappers on his album Spirits, when he told rappers "You can't be progressive on every other song. She's your queen on one song and your bitch on the other." Inconsistency is an issue for all of us however, that's part of the struggle to live to our highest ideals.

Why did the above statement make me feel almost as nauseated as the actual song itself? For starters, Carroll's response demonstrates no mere inconsistency, but rather, a particularly dangerous form of hypocrisy with respect to violence against women. He purports to care about honoring black women, but then proceeds to mask the sexual abuse of his sisters in callous euphemisms. "Inconsistency" is way too mild a term to use for inflicting the kind of sexual abuse on a woman Common sings about. Often times, I have noticed that most men, who won’t actually bring themselves to defend a song like “Poke Her Face,” but will instead use vague excuses in order to avoiding critiquing its message, may be doing so in order to continue living vicariously through these kinds of misogynist lyrics. Common creates a fantasy with these songs that many men can relate to, a fantasy world where men can be sexually dominant over a woman, and, at least in their own minds, put her back in her place.

Carroll makes it sound as though he’s somehow privy to a special knowledge of the decent human being Common supposedly is deep inside; he wants us to believe that a man shoving his cock down a woman’s throat to the point of making her gag couldn’t possibly be what Common is really about. The sad truth however is, it very well could be. As a radical feminist, I am critical of misogynist constructions of sex, one’s that make it seem as though women enjoy our own subordination and crave being degraded. In the past, people have often responded to my critiques of sexual behavior that degrades & even inflicts pain on women, by claiming that I have to accept that “Some women just like it rough.” These people assume that, if the woman who, in this case, is having her brain fucked by the tip of a man’s penis, consented to “that type of sexual role-play,” then my criticism is irrelevant, a denial of her right to freedom & autonomy. It is not actually any less misogynist however, to argue that some women, rather than all, enjoy violent oral sex, or any sex where a man dominates us; this argument assumes women have as much real, socially defined freedom as men to give or refuse to give consent; it also completely avoids asking any questions about the implications of some men’s desire to control & over power women during sex.

Yet, for the man who gets turned-on by the idea of hurting and shaming a woman, both the fantasy of the “bad girl” who likes to be hurt, who is sexually “liberated” enough to embrace her true, masochistic nature, and the “good girl,” too delicate, too prudish or too repressed to take it, are essential components to his patriarchal vision of human sexuality. Both of these male-supremist representations of women’s sexual role work to uphold misogyny. They both revolve around rigid, patriarchal stereotypes of gender and female desire. In the end, the man is still defining the terms on which women are allowed to be sexual or to pursue sexual freedom and sexual dignity—and, reluctant to grant us real sexual dignity, men even redefine “dignity” as a woman’s “right” to get poked in the face.

Yet, is there any true sexual freedom or sexual dignity for women when the only two options we are given are, learn to like being face-fucked, or learn to deal with being ignored, invisible, written off as worthless? We must not lose sight of the fact that the bad/liberated girl is only as free as the confines of a male-dominated sexual fantasy allow her to be; the good/repressed girl for her part, is only able to feel superior if she tells herself she is “not like those women” Kanye and Common rap about. Men like Common depend on this divide among women, and the fear and mistrust it produces, in order to perpetuate their sexist songs virtually unchallenged. This division among women leaves those who allegedly asked for sexual abuse open to any form of exploitation and degradation as long as they appear to have consented or enjoyed it. Meanwhile, women who would never willingly consent to having a dick shoved through our faces convince ourselves that we need not care about this song, or any song like it—those sorts of things only happen to “dirty” nasty women, after all, women who asked for it, women who deserved it. The fear of sexual violence these songs strike into the heart of any woman willing to allow herself to really feel the lyrics is painful, but we need to understand that these words are directed, not just at some of us, but all of us. Many of us as women would prefer to tip-toe around the issue, to keep pretending that, incomprehensible as it is for us, there must be women for whom the act of getting throat raped and the song can be a legitimate turn on. Do we work so hard to convince ourselves these women asked for it and somehow deserved it, because, deep in our hearts, we know all to well that most men simply aren’t interested in a sexuality that’s more humane?

One problem with this coping mechanism for dealing with hurtful lyrics is that it asks no questions of men. When men experience pleasure over the thought of hating, hurting, gagging, shaming or otherwise overpowering a female person, even one who has supposedly asked to be treated in this way, perhaps the questions should be less about whether or not the woman gave consent or liked it, and more about why the idea of humiliating a woman is so appealing to so many men in the first place. When men still assume a woman can enjoy being subordinated, humiliated or abused during sex, that ideology affects all women. The idea that women are sexually masochistic is an old one, and fundamental to patriarchy itself. It allows men to justify not just the act of hurting women, but the ideology of sexism, their very worldview of women as socially inferior objects made for sex. If a man is self-destructive, if he wants to be degraded or abused, often we ask questions about whether or not he is mentally healthy or might be struggling with some emotional problem. With women however, masochism is all too often considered an innate part of our sexuality. As feminist women, we need to be about the business of reclaiming our sexuality and examining our own ways of thinking about and experiencing arousal. Sometimes this involves asking difficult questions, for both women and men, about why we “like” certain things, how our conceptions of desire came into being. For women socialized, as we all are, in a culture that tells us we are by nature submissive and should enjoy being objectified, it stands to reason that man of us come to really believe these things about ourselves. But why is it forbidden to ask how these views got constructed, or to ask men to change how they feel about, and treat women—all women, all the time, even during sex? I am simply not convinced that women will ever have equality outside the bedroom, when during sex, we are still treated as abuse-hungry masochists.

Unfortunately, the fact that some individuals can be turned-on by a dichotomy that allows misogynist fantasizes to be worked out on and in the bodies of some women, does not advance women’s struggle for emancipation. Nor does it really help to free any individual woman; women who agree to this kind of abusive sex are frequently used, by men, to pressure those of us who admit to disliking it into doing it anyway. “Why can’t you be more like that woman who likes me to come in her mouth and up her nose? Why can’t you be like the women Common raps about?” Under this kind of pressure, many women are made to feel that if we don’t fulfill his sexual fantasies, another woman will. This track spends a lot of time trying to convince women of the fun to be had if they go “wild” and get “poked,” and for many men, the need to convince a woman is actually part of the thrill. It’s not just the sexual dominance itself in the form of violent oral sex, but the humiliation, the power involved in making a good girl go bad, in wringing consent from her as proof of her total submission.

There is a quote of Maya Angelou’s that I love, about the importance of believing a person when they show you who they really are. I think we have a hard time not trusting that people are indeed, who they are, who they show themselves to be. This goes for artists we admire as well as friends, potential partners, even family, and I think it is especially true when it turns that our idols are not what we expected or wanted them to be. Realistically, why wouldn’t it be Common’s highest ideal to win praise for his supposed consciousness, and still get his dick sucked? Through making some pretense of having political consciousness, he can get the obligatory pity we always dish out to men: “At least he gave it a try!” This seems to be the standard consolation for men who at least pretend to do right by women, before being “overcome” as helpless victims of their own inconsistency?

It is difficult for me to believe that men who fail women so enormously, and so dangerously as Common does in this song, were ever really struggling all that hard to be anti-sexist to begin with. In fact I think failure is a part of the dance these men do with so-called consciousness, and the dance always seems to end with women getting shafted, a pun of which I’m sure Common would approve.

Maybe if he knew that recording a track that reifies the disrespect and abuse of women under the banner of “rough sex” would do serious damage to him with fans, Common might not have recorded “Poke Her Face” at all. I’m sure he knew however, that he could count on being excused, that the song might even be used to prop-up an endearing image of him as somebody with human imperfections. He and so many other male public figures are able to spin out this excuse whenever it’s needed, but if Common had known there would be real consequences for his betrayal of women, maybe he would have made different choices. He might well have felt the need to show a little integrity, and compassion towards women as well.

But Common knows I’m sure, that he can afford to play with his reputation. He even mocks the farce of himself being “conscious,” pointing out that it’s no real burden on him, just a brand he knows his fans have loyalty to. They love his act; he can feel confident no one will ever expect more from him, especially when it comes to disrespecting women. Common is pimping his consciousness as a brand. Even in this song, he’s pimping, pimping the fake idea of his consciousness to get a woman to suck his dick. He raps:

But they say you be on that conscious tip
Get your hair right and get up on this conscious dick

Is it really fair to use such tame language as “inconsistent” to describe what Common is doing here? Without condemning these lyrics, those who defend him actually help perpetuate violence against women; they minimize the responsibility of all men not to engage in, celebrate, or excuse male sexual violence, treating it instead as entertainment, a quirky, inconsistent song.

And fuck them other niggas cause you down for her bitches
Fuck them other niggas cause she down for the stickin’
And fuck them other niggas hope she down for some lickin’
And fuck them other bitches

Of course one of the main goals of music can be to create imagery that appeals to the senses and even evokes passion and desire. But as women, are we really supposed to be excited by a song about three men poking their dicks into a woman’s face to the point of gagging her. Are we supposed to believe this is sexual pleasure for women? This is not a song about lust or passion. The imagery is violent, the intent to humiliate. When passion and lust are invoked to explain away violence against women, no wonder so many women, especially young women who now grow up listening to and constantly bombarded by these types of songs, think love is supposed to hurt, humiliate, even kill.

Significantly, the song’s comment response thread on YouTube focused around a debate on whether or not it was a successful remix of Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face.” There was no mention about whether or not re-tilting the title as a violent metaphor for forced oral sex was immature, male-supremacist, or derogatory. Material focused on sexual violence against women is now easily ignored in both music and pop-culture. We appear to have become so desensitized when it comes to misogyny, that anyone who notices it is almost immediately dismissed as prudish or overly-sensitive. It has never been hip to question male-supremacy, particularly in the area of sex, where men’s sexuality has long been assumed to be “naturally” more violent than women’s. But now, questioning these attitudes about sex seems more difficult than ever, as the media co-opts certain aspects of feminism to promote a patriarchal ideal that defines misogyny as the “most sexy,” exciting, empowering, even inevitable component of sex. Women are encouraged to believe rough sex is the type of sex a women a woman who is truly liberated and sexually uninhibited would choose. Thinking critically about issues of power inequities or asking difficult questions about sexual violence could threaten to put a damper on this “sexiness parade,” and yet, it is precisely such eroticizing of power and powerlessness that keeps traditional, patriarchal constructs of gender and sexuality afloat. The new breed of “fun feminists” understand this; they act accordingly, celebrating or attempting to reclaim a male-supremacist sex- industry, and measuring women’s liberation by the “get off test,” i.e., “If I get off, then get off my back about it!” Radical feminist critical of BDSM and the global sex trade are considered old-school party poopers; how dare we continue to remind people that, unfortunately, ain’t a damn thing changed when it comes to how most men continue to view sex, as an act through which women were created and predestined to be dominated. This song is certainly an obvious and disturbing example of how strong that belief still is.

She wanna have whatever she like
She can if she bring her friend
And we can have one hell of a night
Through the day

On the track, each man takes his turn at rapping, almost as if he is symbolically taking his turn at getting oral sex. Even if the rap is meant to be about multiple women (the initial woman addressed, better, of course, bring her friends, because after all, she’s nothing special) the continuous flow of the song makes it sound like a gang bang. Common even raps about how the woman he’s using is drunk. Men love to argue that if a grown woman gets drunk, then that grown woman gets what she deserves’ she’s been irresponsible, and shouldn’t expect men to be gentlemen, men don’t owe her a damn thing. These rappers even revel in the idea of a woman being too drunk to put up much resistance; if she’s easier to use and control for sex, it doesn’t matter much whether her ability to give consent is impaired.

She Blamed It On The Al-A-A-Al-A-Alcohol
She Had Her Hair Did, It Was Bound To Fall

It sounds as if the male singers are talking about one woman or “bitch” as they call her, whom they are jointly using together. All we know about her is that she’s at least 21, in college, a stripper, and of course she loves to suck cock…having it poked not in her mouth, in her face, the implication being that Common and Kanye own her entire head. In fact, Kid Cudi brags about making this woman vomit up, and then swallow down, his ejaculate:

I’m hopin’ she a rider
When it’s said and done
And she spit it up and swallow now

There is no doubt in my mind that this song is describing an oral rape; specifically, it describes a group rape of one woman by several men. Any intelligent adult could draw the same conclusion from even a casual listen to these lyrics. But, of course, Common and his buddies win, because all “art” is up to interpretation. Since this culture positions women’s sexuality as being inherently masochistic, this song can also be viewed as simply and innocently reporting on how a woman (or a “bitch” because, after all, it isn’t enough to humiliate her by fucking her, she must also be ridiculed and called names) consents and loves to have her face “poked” by the dicks of three guys. And of course, even though rape boils down to an issue of consent, placing all responsibility and blame on the woman (did she agree to it or didn’t she? if she did agree but was subsequently humiliated, well, that’s her own damned fault). We are meant to assume that this woman has given her consent for an oral gang bang, but even while offering this supposed agreement, she must also endure being called a “bitch” by Common and his buddies? The name calling is necessary, because these men hate her for being a woman; the more she lives up to their assumptions about her as a self-abnegating, masochistic bitch, the more they feel justified in doing whatever they want with and to her—she apparently “enjoys” it after all.

And lest I be accused of unfairly picking on Kid Cudi, Common and Kanye, let me point out that this is not the only hip hop song about oral rape. Another example of this “genre” is Lil’Wayne and Cam’ron’s, “You Gonna Suck It or Not?” Not only is this song about violent and degrading oral sex, it makes sure to take a swipe at lesbians and feminists as well, so that there is no confusion about its misogynist intentions. Just in case you had any lingering doubts, Cam’ron croons:

You don't like men? me neither, what a coincidink (what a coincidence)
Ms. Jiggy, Ms. Piggy, Pinky mink, pinky ring blingin'
Ma, are you gonna suck it or not?
I ain't the type to diss you, kinda like to hit you
That's the situation, bring wifey with you
Would you like a tissue? (Why?) You gon' need it
for the cum up in your nose babygirl cause you suckin my cock

After this earlier meditation on the theme of oral rape by two obvious hip hop bad boys, I guess the “conscious brothers” could not stand to be outdone. They had to have their own oral rape song, to show the bad boys they ain’t soft, they can go hard on a bitch too. They like getting their dicks sucked as much as any red blooded African American man. And since sucking dick is so expected nowadays, no longer shameful enough in and of itself, the “conscious brothers” are going to make sure this bitch knows this is not for her enjoyment, this is to put her in her place. They will say the most violent, humiliating things they can think of while fucking her, so that she never forgets they are the big men, and she’s nothing but a woman, a hole to fuck, a face to poke, some “brain” to get and hit. If she “likes” it, that wouldn’t be as much fun; it’s not fun unless she suffers a little; so shove her head down on your cock, so her brain matter feels it. And then, see if you can even somehow make her say she “likes” not liking it. Make no mistake, these types of songs are not about celebrating sex and pleasure, certainly not women’s pleasure. These songs are constructed by men who get off on hurting women, and who expect women to at least pretend to get off on being hurt.

Although I doubt Kanye really wants to kill a woman with his dick (though godess knows, whether or not he’d want to if he could get away with it I can’t say) he uses the metaphor of a woman’s “brain” getting him off. This is violent, and has nothing to do with physical stimulation. The idea of fucking into a woman’s brain is only necessary for a man who wants to exercise complete control and domination over another human being. Interesting how, in hip hop, women are consistently portrayed as nothing except tits and ass. A woman’s brain is only considered an asset when she’s giving head, since, after all, every part of her must be put to use in servicing men. Her mind, worth nothing in men’s eyes for its intellect, becomes something worth rapping about if he can use his dick to rape it. And don’t get it twisted: Kanye and Common, the most famous of the trio, are no better than Kid Cudi. They co-sign everything Kid Cudi says. Here’s Common, in his rap:

Down, down for a damn, Cudi already said it
A poker face book I already read it

The one consolation I felt after hearing this song was that I’ve never been a fan of Kanye or Common. Not ever. And I know a lot of “progressive” folk who are. Still, this did not feel like a betrayal for me. It felt like just another slap, or another poke in the face I guess, from black men. It reminded me why, while I still may have a little lingering faith in black men individually to do the right thing by women, I no longer have any faith in them collectively.

Hold up, born in 88′?
How old is that? Old enough

Make no mistake about it, this so-called inconsistency of Common’s is not simply about his use of the word “bitch”. This song is a celebration of a man using a woman’s “face” to plant his dick in. It is not a song in which otherwise conscious rappers call some women “bitches”; it’s a song in which three guys take turns (aren’t they gentlemanly?) poking their erections through a woman’s face. The sounds used to create the chorus is like a grotesque mixture of moaning and gagging. And isn’t this what most men want to hear during sex, what they want to believe women are truthfully like? They want to be confirmed in their belief that, though we may resist at first, we will ultimately enjoy being mouth-fucked, because we’re all closet-masochists who get our pleasure from being in pain. How can a man who claims to care about gender equality like Carroll, not see the danger in this song’s deeply anti-feminist assertions?

When you use your Medulla Oblongata
And give me scoliosis until I comatoses
And do it while I sleep yeah a little osmosis

And it’s not just about Common. It’s also about Kanye. Kanye too is considered “different”—he’s no Snoop Dogg after all, right? He even comes up with the occasional political statement about race, religion or homosexuality. There was even some speculation about his sexuality for a while there, what with his “man bags” and above average fashion sense. This song may well represent a misguided attempt on Kanye’s part at trying to reassure us of his heterosexuality. Heterosexuality, however, does not have to be, and moreover, should not be, misogynist. Kanye made the choice to express his manhood and sexuality in some of the most woman-hating ways possible, and he did this because of who and what he truly is: a misogynist. And in many ways, Kanye’s misogyny is even more dangerous than the hyper-masculinity peddled by the usual suspects in hip hop’s war on women. He is more dangerous because he is essentially telling men the world is yours: you can have your skinny jeans, man bags, and blow jobs! You can have what she’s having (mani, pedi and a purse!) and you can still have her (on her knees, so that she never forgets who’s boss, of course).

Kanye actually and ridiculously even invokes Rosa Parks as a metaphor for orally violating a woman.

And That’s My Commandment, You Ain’t Gotta Ask Moses
More Champagne, More Toastest
More Damn Planes, More Coastest
And Fuck A Bus, The Benz Is Parked Like Rosa

Is this what being “conscious” and literate means for men in hip hop? Does it make you smarter and better to be able to write songs about shoving your dick so far up a woman’s mouth, you hit her brain matter, or, as Kanye puts it in that oh-so-sophisticated way of his, her Medulla Oblongata? This is rape. What man seriously believes that it could be a pleasurable experience for a woman to have her skull, her brain, invaded by a penis? And if indeed this is all just a metaphor for “rough sex” it sounds violent and hateful rather than erotic; it sounds soul-crushing and humiliating, rather than reciprocal and pleasurable. The only man who could enjoy puncturing a woman’s brain with his genitals is not really a “conscious” rapper; he’s a misogynist, a sadist, a rapist.

What exactly will it take for people to understand the seriousness of this kind of violence against women? What would it take for people to stop conflating sex with power, to see sexual violence against women as real. Do you still like Common because he’s only rapping about a gang bang? Would you keep on liking him if he admitted to joining in a real gang bang? Is that still excusable, just as long as he was having an “off day”? Like Kenneth Carroll says, we all struggle, and nobody’s perfect. It would be crazy to demand a man be “perfect” enough to consistently refrain from orally raping or sexually humiliating women throughout his entire life, wouldn’t it? Not taking out the recycling, accidentally locking your keys in the car, forgetting to bring in the mail, maybe poking your penis in a woman’s mouth with your homeboys while she moans “oh, oh, oh, oh” once in a while—it’s all the same thing at the end of the day.

Except, men’s sexism isn’t actually something accidental and forgivable. Fans may want to reduce it to something trivial because that makes them feel better about continuing to support both Kanye and Common, but that doesn’t make the violence less real. And for their part, these men know they can get away with singing about whatever they want to, that men like Carroll will understand and forgive them; if they can justify the struggle of these artists to live towards their ideals, maybe fans can even forgive themselves for their own misogyny, and live vicariously a little bit too, through these other men’s exploits. And women…well, women will, as always, lower our standards for men, partly because we’ve been warned not to expect to much from them. And partly because the realities of our lives have taught us all too well that, when it comes to asking for more ethical, egalitarian sex from men, that offer is rarely ever on the table.

There seems to be endless sympathy for the men, but no concern for the women they’re degrading. But one thing we cannot allow ourselves to fall for is, men doing dirty, and then indicting anyone who dares to call them out on their bullshit. No one is perfect, that’s true, and yet, not everyone goes around making tracks about poking their penises into women’s faces. Common is not simply flawed, or human, or inconsistent. He and Kanye hate women, and in that way, are no better than Lil’Wayne, Snoop Dogg or Ludacris. They have packaged their woman-hating a little differently; they have a different brand on the outside, but are very much the same underneath. We don’t expect much from these men in terms of being anti-sexist, and because of this, saying Bush doesn’t care about black people, or whatever Common is famous for saying (I honestly don’t know because I normally just ignore him) somehow manages to pass for political integrity. I’ve always been suspicious of black men who call me “sister” or “queen”. As far as I’m concerned, these men should earn the right to both call us sister and be our brother. Black women need to stop accepting meaningless bones of acknowledgement from black men, and I think our standards for doing right by women must have sunk to an all time low, when a song like this one can be written off as just a “bump” on the road toward a man becoming a better person. If only we’d listen:

But man, her head was gooder than the music
electro body known to blow fuses
A stripper from the south lookin for a payday
Said bitch you should do it for the love like Ray Jay

In hip hop, an artist needs a brand. That’s how it works. Consciousness is Common’s brand. Being an asshole (sorry, a successful gangster-rapper-turned-entrepreneur) is Jay Z’s brand. Either way both rappers are given a free pass, for being conscious but flawed, or for being a sellout but having fame and fortune to show for it. Might seems to make right either way, and the dudes always win.

I can’t help but wonder if there could even be a coalition building between the Jay Z’s and 50 Cents of the world and the Commons and Kanye Wests? Both brands know they need each other to keep hip hop going. Everybody is getting paid, and male bonding around that power—the power to define both consciousness and selling out—ensures that both groups ultimately owe no real integrity or consistency to anybody else. Their success and immunity to criticism are guaranteed, and they become bulletproof, seamlessly complementing each other. They are untouchable, since different people need to believe different fantasies, though in the end, both fantasies are two sides of the same coin, the same dirty sexy money.

If Common or Kanye makes a sexist song, well hey, nobody’s perfect. Remember how he stood up to Bush?? That’s important. You feminists are never satisfied. If Jay Z talks about being a pimp, hey, he’s just keeping it real, and look, he’s savvy, a real businessman. Might makes right, all ya’ll feminists are just haters.

In his November 2007 interview with Charlie Rose, Jay Z makes it clear that he hasn’t just been Kanye West’s boss, he’s also a fan and a mentor to the rising star he called a “Hip Hop heir.” Jay Z’s siding with Kanye against 50 Cent in their battle to outsell each others new album releases made great business sense as was his infamous Black Album rhyme: "If skills sold, truth be told/I'd probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli." Jay Z knows that the more he gives props to artists that are supposed to represent an alternative to him the more they wont bite back at the ideological hand that feeds them scraps of mainstream acknowledgement. Critically acclaimed artists are too busy being honored by the commercially acclaimed to resist and challenge their messages directly.

I now realize there’s absolutely no point in trying to keep track of which one of my favorite critically acclaimed artist is collaborating with yet another unsavory and sexist rapper next. Apparently in the music industry resistance by the “underground”, if resistance is indeed the point of being unlike the mainstream, is futile because rapping critically about materialism, ignorance, violence and even misogyny clearly doesn’t mean you won’t then give props to or make songs with artists who peddle materialism, ignorance, violence and misogyny.

Clearly the idea among these male artists was never to change the industry’s treatment and messages about women. Kanye’s most commercially successful and signature song is still his Jamie Foxx collaboration “Golddigger” which peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 on September 6, 2005.

So where exactly does this leave women? What can we except and hold on to, when it comes to the men we admire and support?

I don’t even think it’s a forgiving heart that compels men like Carroll to refuse to condemn “Poke Her Face” and the rappers who made it out right. I think maybe, like most people, he’s just of the mindset that, “boys will be boys”. We can’t expect them not to disrespect a woman at least some of the time, and Carroll urges us to take pity on Common for his struggle to live up to his ideals, as we’re supposed to assume they must be. Wow, it must really hurt Common so much, to treat women like dirt; it must have really been difficult for him to call women bitches, to demand they suck his cock. Poor, poor Common.

But they say you be on that conscious tip
Get your hair right and get up on this conscious dick

The truth is that Carroll’s argument is actually one conscious men use to get off all the time, and unfortunately it flies with most people. At least it flies when the issue is the mistreatment of women. Being a man who is consistently anti-sexist is never expected or demanded of men; men can afford to be only as conscious as they need to in order to get by, and not a bit more. Is this why a man can’t possibly be expected not to make a track about violently using a woman for oral sex? Is this the twisted standard by which three men singing about jointly orally raping a woman is somehow equated with a “struggle” to live up to their highest ideals? We have to face facts: this song is Common’s ideal. This is who he is, and has been all along. His fans just had him wrong. And that’s actually their bad, not his.

Now, if you continue to support him and Kanye West after this, fine. But you won’t be able to do so anymore in ignorance. Now you know, and are complicit in the success of misogynists. Maybe you can blame that on your own inconsistency, right? How convenient. Still, it leaves unanswered the question, are progressive folk who excuse the blatant hatred of women demonstrated by the Commons and Kanyes of the hip hop world, bigger fans of these artists, or of human justice?

"Birthers" are DUMB

2009-07-28T11:24:00.001-07:00

Racism Is the Prime Cause for Debunked Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theory
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on July 28, 2009, Printed on July 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141587/

By now, everyone has heard of the "birthers," that rabid crop of self-appointed patriots who insist that Barack Hussein Obama is not a legitimate president because he is not really an American citizen. What was once a nasty little rumor in the early days of the presidential race has since evolved into a full-blown conspiracy theory whose proponents, though "viewed as irrelevant by the White House, and as embarrassing by much of the Republican Party," in the words of Politico's Ben Smith, nonetheless enjoy increasingly high-profile political support, and media coverage 9/11 "truthers" could only dream of.

The birthers' conspiracy theory -- which holds that Obama was born in Kenya, despite all evidence to the contrary -- has long been debunked. The Obama camp released a copy of his birth certificate as early as June of last year (although that only seemed to fan the flames). Yet, last week the "birthers" became big news again, after a video emerged showing Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) confronted at a town hall meeting by a woman who angrily accused him of being complicit in the cover-up of Obama's true origins. Castle, who is commonly labeled a "moderate Republican" -- and whose subsequent remark would earn him the label "RINO American Traitor" in some corners of the internet -- seemed genuinely perplexed. "Well I don't know what comment that invites," he said, to a chorus of boos. "If you're referring to the president, then he is a citizen of the United States."

The video of Castle's unfortunate run-in with the birthers hit YouTube and went viral. MSNBC put the clip on heavy rotation; "Hardball" host Chris Matthews devoted multiple segments to the topic; On CNN and on his radio show, sneering nativist Lou Dobbs fanned the flames with such remarks as, "What is the deal here? I'm starting to think we have … a document issue," and on Larry King, Dick Cheney's increasingly vocal daughter, Liz, shared her highly unempirical view that "one of the reasons you see people so concerned about this" is that "people are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever … a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas." By midweek, Jon Stewart had lampooned the birthers and their media allies on Comedy Central, a move that, given his recent distinction as the new "most trusted man in news," might have spelled the death of the birthers.

Of course, it hasn't.

This week alone, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Ok) was quoted as saying they may "have a point," while the fourth-highest ranking member of the House, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said she'd "like to see the documents." Meanwhile, an attempt by Hawaii Democrat Rep. Neil Abercrombie to pass a resolution to commemorate his state's 50th anniversary (while also proclaiming the state as President Obama’s birthplace) was temporarily blocked by Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann on Monday, only to pass a few hours later.

By now it seems everyone has put in their two cents (and then some) about the birthers. But while most media coverage has treated them as incurable wackjobs pushing a conspiracy theory to be classified alongside the moon landing "hoax" (40 years old last week!) and the (considerably larger) group of Americans who believe 9/11 was an inside job, the "truth" of Obama's birth seems to fall into a slightly different category. Like all conspiracy theories, it springs from the fertile soil of collective denial. Unlike all conspiracy theories, it thrives on a deep-rooted, racist belief: that a black man with a foreign name could never have won the presidency in the United States through anything other than trickery, deception, or fraud.

"If Barack Obama was an Irish American or a Polish American or a German American, there would be no discussion anywhere in this country about his citizenship," radio host E. Steven Collins told Chris Matthews on Thursday, in response to his fellow guest, deranged right-winger and Nixon Watergate operative G. Gordon Liddy, whose own attempt to defend the birthers should mark a low point, even for his career. "This is because many people in this nation cannot still accept the fact that a brilliant African-American is the commander-in-chief."

Tim Wise, author of Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, puts this in perspective: "When [Arnold] Schwarzenegger became governor, there were people who were saying,'hey we should amend the constitution to allow people who are naturalized citizens to maybe run for president."

"Although that didn't go anywhere -- and my guess is that the 'birthers' who are doing this crap with Obama probably wouldn't have been real keen on that idea -- notice that there was no groundswell of anger and opposition."

It's the Racism, Stupid!

Perhaps it is too obvious to say that the birthers' insistence on Obama's illegitimacy is based on racism. Even so, why isn't this collective racism at the heart of the "debate"?

"That's one of the problems with this so-called post-racial era that we're in," says Wise. "White folks in particular -- and some folks of color -- are very quick to avoid that angle at all costs, lest they be accused of somehow being the ones who are somehow racist in some way or who are thinking in racial terms."

After all, Americans have seen what happens when people of color dare to suggest that the country is anything but perfect: they are ruthlessly attacked. Take the rage over Michelle Obama's remark during the presidential campaign that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country," which was treated as unpatriotic hate speech. Or the controversy prompted by Eric Holder's remark that we are a "nation of cowards" when it comes to race.

Or, more recently, the ugly backlash against Obama's (considerably mild) remark that a judge should have a capacity for "empathy" and an understanding of "people's hopes and struggles." "Usually that's a code word for an activist judge," Sen. Orrin Hatch told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week, a line that became a rallying cry against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. ("I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of or against parties before the court," Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions proclaimed at the confirmation hearing.) In the end, the obsessive harping over Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark and right-wing accusations that she is a "reverse racist" because of her ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano (otherwise known as the Connecticut firefighters case) hijacked her confirmation hearing.

In fact, no sooner was the latest "birther" story gaining ground last week than we saw this same phenomenon on full display with a new controversy: the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In an unguarded moment, Obama dared to say what might have seemed pretty obvious to even the most superficially race-conscious: the Cambridge police, "acted stupidly" by handcuffing Gates in his own home, particularly given the "long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." Obama's comment became national news; the networks seized on it, the blogosphere went wild, and by Friday afternoon, Obama had backtracked, issued a qualified apology, and invited the arresting officer, Sgt. Jim Crowley, to the White House for a beer.

"There's a bizarre tendency, every time a person of color criticizes white folks -- or just white racism -- to say 'that's racism,'" says Wise. "So, by that logic, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a racist, Barack Obama is a racist, Sonia Sotomayor is a racist … Meanwhile, people like Pat Buchanan, who say Sonia Sotomayor is unqualified or that white people built the country and are basically entitled to 100 percent of everything -- they're not racist."

The attacks on Sotomayor, the hysteria over Obama's criticism of the Cambridge police, and the persistent rumors about Obama's origins seem symptomatic of something larger, something Wise believes is "the culmination of centuries of ingrained privilege and hegemonic control."

Even it you are not yourself in a position of power, "… if you've gotten used to seeing people who look like you in almost every position of authority," he says, "to then have to wake up every day and see a man of color basically running the country … is psychologically debilitating to white folks who all their lives weren't necessarily bigots or racists in any overt sense, but had simply gotten complacent with the way things were. They had internalized these notions of entitlement and superiority."

Given how deep such notions of entitlement and superiority can run, it’s hard to know to what degree the birthers are fully conscious of the racist impulses behind their crazy allegations -- or whether they are in such denial that they actually believe their own bullshit.

White Hegemony Challenged

To explain the devastating effect of Obama's presidency on those ordinary Americans who were quite happy with their white privilege, thank you, Wise quotes W.E.B. DuBois's concept of "the psychological wage of whiteness."

"A lot of white folks don't have much. They're struggling, they're hurting, but they've been able to content themselves with the idea that at least they're not black," Wise says.

"So they get this psychological wage from their whiteness. The problem is, that's a wage which is diminishing in value. If you say to yourself, 'Well I may not have much, but at least I'm not black,' and then you look around and say, 'Shit, Black is the new president!' -- now the value of your psychological wage is reduced in real dollar terms. Now you've got nothing."

In Wise's view, "The people who latch on to the birther stuff (working class and struggling middle class whites) aren't any more racist than elite white folks, but their way of expressing it is so much more raw and visceral, because: a) they may not have the filter that you get when you're elite (you sort of know when to check yourself), but also because they're the ones who feel the most threat."

Of course, white elites have their own fears over the erosion of white hegemony -- and not just televised bigots like Pat Buchanan. For a real measure of the panic over their own supremacy, a prime example is the growing number of elected officials who are pandering to -- and emboldening -- the birthers, not just by paying them lip service, but actually introducing legislation based on their outlandish claims.

This past February, Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of his or her birth certificate. (Posey has been widely quoted as saying he "can't swear on a stack of Bibles whether [Obama's] a citizen or not.") As David Weigel recently wrote in the Washington Independent, "While Posey initially said that he disbelieved conspiracy theories about the president's birth, he told the host of an Internet radio show that he'd discussed the possibility of Obama being removed from office over 'the eligibility issue' with 'high-ranking members of our Judiciary Committee.'"

According to Weigel, who has covered the birthers extensively, "as of July 15, nine fellow Republican members of Congress were backing the bill."

"While Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) has said that he supports the bill because he didn't know whether Obama was a citizen, other sponsors say that they weighed in to pour cold water on the conspiracy theories."

One such sponsor is Rep. John Campbell, a California Republican, who parroted this dubious claim in an interview with Chris Matthews on July 21st.

"Wouldn't you like to put all this to rest?" Campbell asked. "That's what this proposal is about." ("Nice try," Matthews responded.)

MATTHEWS: No, no. You are feeding the wacko wing of your party. Do you believe that Barack Obama is a legitimate native-born American or not?

CAMPBELL: That is not what this bill is about, Chris.

MATTHEWS: No, what do you believe?

CAMPBELL: As far as I know, yes, OK?

MATTHEWS: As far as you know?

CAMPBELL: Yes.

Campbell and his ilk may be an embarrassment to more "respectable" and powerful members of the Republican party. But they have more in common than they would like to admit.

"It appears to me that the Republican party, because of the choices it has made -- going back 40 years or more -- on policy positions have guaranteed that they were destined to be, at the end of the day, the white nationalist party," says Wise.

When "your budget-cut philosophy is about cutting programs that are perceived as helping 'those people', your attacks on affirmative action are very clear, your attacks on busing are very clear, all your law and order stuff … when you sow those seeds for several decades, you ought not be surprised when a whole crop of people who have grown up with that -- that's what they're about now."

Take the new chair of the Young Republicans -- a 38-year-old woman named Audra Shay. She recently came under fire when she was caught cosigning a racist Facebook post that read "Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist … Muslim is on there side [sic] … need to take this country back from all of these mad coons … and illegals."

Shay's reply: "You tell em Eric! lol."

From "Barack the Magic Negro"; to e-mails depicting watermelons in front of the White House, to, most recently, a conservative activist's circulation of an image of Obama as a witch doctor, incidents like these are as ubiquitous now as they were during the presidential campaign. And the people yelling "terrorist" at Sarah Palin rallies or those informing John McCain that Obama is "an Arab" have not gone away. Mainstream Republicans who wish to look respectable may want to distance themselves from this "lunatic fringe," but as representatives of a party largely built on structural racism, this is a very real part of their base.

In order for the GOP to survive, says Wise, Republicans are going to have to somehow bring in more minorities -- a task that would require a fundamental revamping of the Republican identity and agenda -- or "they're gonna have to start making a lot of babies."

"I don't think the Republican party ever thought they could get a lot of black folks," Wise says. "But they thought they could get Latinos. And the reason they thought so was because of this ridiculous and fundamentally racist naivete that said, 'Well, Latinos are family-oriented so they'll be against abortion.' If you don't think white folks are that one dimensional how can you think Latinos are so one-dimensional? Well of course you can -- if you're a racist."

For a number of people, the Sotomayor confirmation hearings were a sign that the Republicans are no longer particularly set on attracting "the Latino vote," something that might make the Pat Buchanans in the party smile, but which will ultimately prove costly for the GOP as a whole. As the country's demographics evolve, the party that brought us the Willie Horton ads in the '80s will have to evolve too. And so will white Americans who continue to insist on blaming their problems on people of color.

"The birther stuff to me is part of the same narcissistic breakdown that is at the heart of every e-mail I get from a college kid or that college kid's parents who say, 'I couldn't get enough financial aid because they're giving all the scholarships to black people,'" says Wise. "This narcissism is especially evident when you watch such hateful right-wing media buffoons as Rush Limbaugh -- who supports the birthers -- and "who are just becoming totally unglued."

"On the one hand it's funny," says Wise. "On the other hand it's really frightening, because people when they're in that sort of meltdown mode don't make good decisions and do really crazy things." Take James W. Von Brunn, the white supremacist -- and "birther" himself -- who shot and killed a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in June.

It would be pushing it to see the birthers phenomenon is a a sign that white hegemony is nearing its last throes. However, "one really positive thing about Obama's presidency in regards to race" says Wise, is that "its created this nuttiness on the part of a lot white folks who have always been thinking this stuff but they just haven't been as bold with it."

"At some point it will become increasingly difficult for those who like to deny racism as a problem to continue completely burying their heads."

"At some point, people will have to say, maybe black folks aren't the crazy ones. Maybe it's not the folks of color who have lost their minds. Maybe it's you."

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties and World Special Coverage. http://twitter.com/LilianaSegura
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141587/

R.I.P.

2009-07-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

Have Mercy...

2009-07-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

QUINCY JONES' FONDEST AND WEIRDEST RECOLLECTIONS OF MICHAEL JACKSON

2009-07-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

WISEGUY Q&A: QUINCY JONES' FONDEST AND WEIRDEST RECOLLECTIONS OF MICHAEL JACKSON
The hit-making producer behind the King of Pop's rise discusses Jackson's life, death, and love of chemical peels

Q: Did you believe him about the disease?
A: I don't believe in any of that bullshit, no. No. Never. I've been around junkies and stuff all my life. I've heard every excuse. It's like smokers—"I only smoke when I drink" and all that stuff. But it's bullshit. You're justifying something that's destructive to your existence. It's crazy. I mean, I came up with Ray Charles, man. You know, nobody gonna pull no wool over my eyes. He did heroin 20 years! Come on. And black coffee and gin for 40 years. But when he called me to come over to see him when he was in the hospital on his way out, man, he had emphysema, hepatitis C, cirrhosis of the liver, and five malignant tumors. Please, man! I've been around this all my life. So it's hard for somebody to pull the wool over my eyes. But when somebody's hell-bent on it, you can't stop 'em.

Q: But it must've been so disturbing to see Michael's face turn into what it turned into.
A: It's ridiculous, man! Chemical peels and all of it. And I don't understand it. But he obviously didn't want to be black.

Q: Is that what it was?
A: Well, what do you think? You see his kids?

Q: Did you ever discuss it? Did you ever ask, "Michael, don't you want to be a black man?"
A: No, no, no, please. That's not the way you do it.

Q: But he was beautiful before?
A: Man, he was the most gorgeous guy.

Q: But he seemed to have some deep-seated issue with how he looked?
A: Well, that comes about a certain way. I'm not sure how it happens. I'm just a musician and a record producer. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't understand all that stuff. We all got problems. But there's a great book out called Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another.

Q: I've heard you say that you wanted Michael to sing "She's Out of My Life," the great pop ballad from Off the Wall, in part because you felt like he had to deal with reality.
A: I just wanted to hear him deal with a romantic relationship with a human being rather than a rat. I'm saying that facetiously, but it's true. I saw him at the Oscars very emotional about "Ben." I wanted to hear him get in touch with a real human relationship. "She's Out of My Life" was written by Tommy Bahler from a very bad ending to a marriage. So it was very real. I was saving it for Sinatra. But I gave it to Michael. And Michael cried during every take, and I left the tears in.

Q: It's interesting you mention this, because I was just watching a clip on YouTube where you're sitting on a couch with Michael and he's petting a snake the whole time.
A: Oh, I remember that. Yeah, that was Muscles.

Q: Muscles?
A: Muscles. That's a big boa constrictor he had. Muscles used to wrap around my leg in a record session and crawl across the console. I was never comfortable with that. It was a choice between that and Bubbles—you know, the chimp.

Q: Did you ever meet Bubbles?
A: Are you kidding me? He bit a hole in my daughter's hand! Rashida's hand. Rashida Jones—did you see I Love You, Man? That's my daughter. She was a little girl. And Bubbles bit her hand. Michael used to bring Muscles and Bubbles by the house all the time, you know.

Q: What did you think of that? Wasn't that a little weird?
A: I don't know, man. Everybody does his own thing. I've met every freak in the business. Everybody has their idiosyncrasies. I try not to judge it, you know. I know all women are junkies for little dogs and bags and purses. Ha ha ha ha!

Q: At root, what do you think killed Michael Jackson?
A: I don't know, man. I'm a musician. I'm not a psychiatrist. I would think that the pressure of the concerts and the debt and everything else . . . look, I've been in the hands of Nobel doctors for the last five years, in Stockholm, at the Karolinska hospital, which you can't even pay to get in. I've learned so much about the human mind and the body, and the doctors talk all the time about how you become your thoughts. It's true. With one thought it starts, you know, and if you sit there and just stay hung up on one negative thought, you will become that thought. I know that Lisa Marie Presley said that she always thought he was going to die like Elvis. You sit and think about that stuff, it'll happen to you. If you start thinking about darkness instead of light, or fear instead of love, you'll get in trouble. I really believe that.

Q: With so many people asking you about Michael Jackson, is it hard to find the private space in which to mourn his death?
A: Yes, it is. It's surrealistic. I don't know how to process it at all. Because everybody's reacting to it, and making up their own answers.

Q: You've said that you don't attend funerals anymore because you've lost so many friends. Do you plan to attend Michael Jackson's funeral?
A: No, not at all, not at all. Because it's going to be, like, 9 million people there, and it's not what I want to see.

Q: You're not going to be there?
A: No. I can't be there, anyway. I'm going to Wales the day after tomorrow, I go to Montreux, I go to Marbella, I go to the south of France. My condolences and love I've already sent to the family. But being there with 10 million people is not my idea of a tribute to somebody you were so close to—who's got a part of your soul. Our souls were joined, you know. And a piece of it goes with him.
http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_9937&pageNum=1

David Carradine’s Legacy of Shame

2009-06-05T10:41:00.001-07:00

David Carradine’s Legacy of Shame

by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Atlasien

David Carradine was found dead yesterday in a hotel room in Bangkok. The circumstances of his death are outrageously sensationalistic. I won’t go into any detail other than to remark that these circumstances have helped ensure a steady barrage of media coverage. Just now, tuning into NPR in my car, I heard part of a David Carradine interview, replayed to commemorate the occasion of his death.

He was a famous and much-loved actor. Tributes to Carradine are pouring in. In discussion threads devoted to Carradine, you’ll find many nostalgic accounts of childhood evenings spent watching his TV show, Kung Fu.

Some Asian-Americans, such as myself, may find these tributes quite upsetting.

I remind myself that David Carradine was an actor. He was doing a job for money. It’s difficult to draw a work/life dividing line when it comes to celebrity actors, but the line does exist. And I cannot presume to judge the moral worth of David Carradine’s life. He was a human being whose life is just as worthy of respect, just as precious, as the life of any other human being.

But I can judge his career. Fuck David Carradine’s godawful racist career!

For many Asian-Americans, tributes to Carradine’s careeer feel like a cold and bitter insult. Bruce Lee was originally considered for the lead in Kung Fu, but the producers decided America was not ready for an Asian man as a heroic lead. David Carradine was chosen instead. His character, Kwai Chang Caine, was supposed to be half-Chinese and half-white. All the rest of the characters reacted to him as if he were Asian, when he was quite obviously 100% white. This confused the hell out of me when I first saw the show. Once I realized he was supposed to be Asian, it made me angry.

Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, Kung Fu was a pretty good show. It was plotted and shot and edited skillfully. It touched on important philosophical and cultural themes. It was ground-breaking, unique, and had some of the only respectful depictions of Asian culture available on American television in the 1970s. What were the alternatives? The servile, scraping, Hop Sing on Bonanza? Minor characters on M.A.S.H.? A scattered assortment of cackling Fu Manchu-type villains? It would be hard for Asian-Americans not to want to watch Kung Fu. But every time we watched it, we were reminded that it was possible for white people to take the best of what they wanted from Asian culture. Asian culture was mysterious and cool, but real Asian people were unwanted and superfluous. They could easily be replaced by the right kind of white man. And nobody remarked about it, nobody complained… at least it seemed that way.

I was very young when I saw reruns of Kung Fu, but I caught on quickly, and began to dread the sight of David Carradine’s face. I still have some fond memories of sequences that didn’t involve Carradine, such as the training sequences set in China. Then I stopped watching the reruns because the experience became too painful. Sitting there and watching was like… offering your body up to be erased. It’s hard to explain.

Anyway, it was an ignominious start to a career, and it went downhill from there. Carradine milked Kung Fu for as long as possible, and when the milk ran dry, he just squeezed harder, until blood dripped out of the metaphorical udders. He even did a series of Kung Fu workout videos. Quentin Tarantino capitalized on Kung Fu nostalgia by casting Carradine in that pretentious faux-ironic Asiaphile crapfest, Kill Bill. And a few years ago, Carradine did a series of Kung Fu-inspired Yellowbook.com commercials. Get it? Yellow Book? Wink wink, nudge nudge, vomit. In 2009, the heavily yellowfaced Carradine had a role in Crank 2 as a lecherous Chinese gangster named “Poon Dong”. Wink wink… and so on.

I don’t blame David Carradine for all the anti-Asian racism in America. But he had an important and highly visible role in a vicious feedback loop. Audiences identified with his performance of a calm, detached, self-important masculinity seemingly grounded in an exotic Asian tradition. He satisfied certain urges of the audience in that regard, and as he performed, he innovated, and created new and more refined stereotypes with extra layers of self-awareness and sophistication. His performances also worked to naturalize the desire of white people to appropriate the aspects of Asian culture they happened to find most appealing.

In a better world, Bruce Lee would have gotten the lead role in Kung Fu. It would have been a truly great show, not a merely good one. David Carradine would have gone on to other projects, and perhaps he would have become a great and versatile actor, meeting new challenges and truly acting instead of being frozen in the same stale role for decades. He was a man of many diverse talents and could have found fulfillment and success in other realms as well. If I continue much longer in this morbid vein I’ll write a full-fledged alternate history obituary, so I’ll stop… although I would have liked to say more good things about David Carradine’s impact on the world. But in all honesty, the way his choices affected my life turned out to be very negative, and I wish it didn’t have to end like that.

The More Things Change.....

2009-05-21T17:53:00.001-07:00

French Directive

[The following directive was published without comment in The Crisis]

[To the] French Military Mission. stationed with the American Army. August 7, 1918. Secret information concerning the Black American Troops.

It is important for French officers who have been called upon to exercise command over black American troops, or to live in close contact with them, to have an exact idea of the position occupied by Negroes in the United States. The information set forth in the following communication ought to be given to these officers and it is to their interest to have these matters known and widely. disseminated. It will devolve likewise on the French Military Authorities, through the medium of the Civil Authorities, to give information on this subject to the French population residing in the cantonments occupied by American colored troops.

1. The American attitude upon the Negro question may seem a matter for discussion to many French minds. But we French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call "prejudice." [recognize that] American opinion is unanimous on the "color question," and does not admit of any discussion.

The increasing number of Negroes in the United States (about 15,000,000) would create for the white race in the Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been made between them.

As this danger does not exist for the French race, the French public has become accustomed to treating the Negro with familiarity and indulgence.

This indulgence and this familiarity [These] are matters of grievous concern to the Americans. They consider them an affront to their national policy. They are afraid that contact with the French will inspire in black Americans aspirations which to them (the whites) appear intolerable. It is of the utmost importance that every effort be made to avoid profoundly estranging American opinion.

Although a citizen of the United States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible. The black is constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and professional conscience, and for his tendency toward undue familiarity.

The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American who has to repress them sternly. For instance, the black American troops in France have, by themselves, given rise to as many complaints for attempted rape as all the rest of the army. And yet the (black American) soldiers sent us have been the choicest with respect to physique and morals, for the number disqualified at the time of mobilization was enormous.

Conclusion

1. We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers. We may be courteous and amiable with these last, but we cannot deal with them on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter. We must not eat with [the blacks] them, must not shake hands or seek to talk or meet with them outside of the requirements of military service.

2. We must not commend too highly the black American troops, particularly in the presence of (white) Americans. It is all right to recognize their good qualities and their services, but only in moderate terms strictly in keeping with the truth.

3. Make a point of keeping the native cantonment population from "spoiling" the Negroes. (White) Americans become greatly incensed at any public expression of intimacy between white women with black men. They have recently uttered violent protests against a picture in the "Vie Parisienne" entitled "The Child of the Desert" which shows a (white) woman in a "cabinet particulier" with a Negro. Familiarity on the part of white women with black men is furthermore a source of profound regret to our experienced colonials who see in it an overweening menace to the prestige of the white race.

Military authority cannot intervene directly in this question, but it can through the civil authorities exercise some influence on the population.

[Signed] LINARD

The Washington Redskins???

2009-05-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, in a judicial decision that hinged on a legal technicality, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., upheld the right of the local pro football team to keep its unconscionable nickname.

Gloated team attorney Bob Raskopf, “It’s a great day for the Redskins and their fans and their owner, Dan Snyder.”

Alas, it was another shameful day for America.

In clinging to the most racially offensive moniker held by a major U.S. professional sports team since the Emancipation Proclamation – yes, I know, since forever – the franchise continues to offend some Native Americans and assault the sensibilities of a citizenry that should be long past such insensitive and shallow depictions.

How can a large majority of us not be offended? Imagine trying to explain “Redskins” to a foreign visitor or a time-traveler from the future? Every time I say the word, I throw up in my mouth a little and wonder why there is no widespread outrage.

I’ve heard all the arguments about why this name should be allowed to exist, and they move me about as much as Jim Zorn’s red-zone offense in a tight game against a strong opponent. (Sorry – I realize that was a cheap shot. Besides, I wouldn’t want to get ‘Skins fans ticked off at me or anything.)

You can spare me the protestations about how the name is actually a tribute to Native Americans, or how other allegedly similar groups (Vikings? Really?) are also consigned to mascot status. You can skip the talk about the importance of the team name to its fans or the tradition that would be compromised were it to be changed.

I’m not hearing it, because if I close my eyes and think about where we are as a society and the fact that this name still exists, it’s a complete travesty on both visceral and logical levels.

Would we “honor,” say, Chicago’s African-American population by calling its NFL team the Brownskins?

If the NBA placed a franchise in Hawaii, would it consider paying homage to the islands’ Asian influences by competing as the Yellowskins?

And while I’m sure we could all come up with some Jewish slurs to continue the analogy, I submit that an anti-Semitic major league owner like Marge Schott might’ve been quite comfortable fielding a team known as the Foreskins.

Ridiculous? Absolutely. And Redskin is just as absurd, whether you’ve been conditioned to regard it as normal or not.

Worse, it’s blatantly offensive, and don’t bother trotting out the examples of certain Native Americans who regard it as a sign of great respect. The fact that even a handful of them were upset enough to sue to stop the name from existing, a legal fight that has gone on for 17 years and counting, should be enough to let decency prevail. And if you’re angrily composing an email telling me how the name’s meaning to you and your fellow fans supersedes the desires of these people not to be publicly lampooned, I’m going to bet my last Abe Lincoln note that you’re not a member of a traditionally oppressed minority group.

If changing the name of the established team in the nation’s capital seems so unthinkable, you might be forgetting about the Washington Wizards, who from 1963-1997 were known as the Bullets. Two years earlier owner Abe Pollin had announced that, because he had grown uncomfortable with the nickname’s violent overtones, the NBA franchise would be rechristened, and a fan contest ensued.

So the Bullets became the Wizards, and guess what? The sun came up the next morning, the rivers continued to flow to the oceans, and Calbert Cheaney kept getting beat off the dribble. (OK, that was a cheap shot, too. Just making sure you’re still paying attention.)

Things change. Societies evolve. The improbable becomes reality. Remember, there’s a family that recently moved to a D.C. residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and its presence there made a statement to the world about how far our country has come in terms of racial enlightenment.

Since the words “President” and “Obama” became Siamese twins (oops, another outdated term), it has never been so tough to make the argument that in the United States, a person’s skin color is a primary means by which he/she is judged.

Unless, of course, you’re part of that minuscule slice of the population that pays attention to pro football. Those of us, like our current commander in chief, who fall into that category need to think long and hard about our tolerance for such a preposterously backward name in such a conspicuous setting.

The Redskins may have had their day in court and prevailed, at least for the time being. It’s my sincere hope that before too long, the court of public opinion is far less forgiving.

..From Chuck D.

2009-05-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

The PE PErception; ...Pay Attention The Cheapest Price You Will Pay.

April 30, 2009

Waited till after Coachella to write this tdome . We had a great time playing the Nations set in front of a very large So-Cal crowd. I'd been reading about this festival the past 9 years in magazines like URB , and this year felt being part of their 10th year was officially dope as they used to say. Met some peeps like one of the promoters Mr Bill Folds who personally thanked me afterwards.

It's a trip because the USA media regards PE as this relic like anomaly, asking questions like" what do you think about playing this big festival?"

PE was the first fit for festival rap act sans RUN-DMC , Grandmaster Flash and the 5 and the Beastie Boys. Built for it, we were among the first rap squads to witness a "pit" playing them euro-Asian festivals in the late 80s early 90s. Before people assume they can now google or 'wik' whatever they want to know about us, Coachella was a piece of cake for us on stage at least... 22 years of this prepared us. A very organized, structured festival in SoCal close enough for Hollywood and Vegas types to get their Woodstock-Monterrey-Reading Fest on. Before all this talk last year about Jay-Z -Glastonbury in the UK, they coulda googled that PE smashed Reading in 1992 playing head to head with Nirvana and a shakey Kurt Cobain. But it's convenient that black groups stay silent and thus forgotten until called upon. Thats why they cannot stand Little Richard. You talk rock and roll , you gotta pay attention to him.

In the day where acts say "nothing" and get talked about PE will bring noise without really trying. Professor Griff was mentioning the upcoming Alex Jones film documentary he and KRS are featured in called the Obama Deception. He mentioned it several times. The press seemed to jump all over it. Coupled with the press continuing to pin "reality TV star all over Flav , some media are foaming at the mouth to position this on Public Enemy 20 years after the PE-Griff-semetic scandal of 89. Flavor and Griff are the energy of Public Enemy like it or not...at this juncture I could care less about what opinion thinks of the "PE Perception, on stage myself, DJ Lord, the banned, S1Ws gotta play our zone. The energy Griff and Flav bring has never been duplicated by any other rap act to this very day because they're beyond definition. The press has really very little to say beyond the music of many acts today and their transparent 'opinions'. Thus they've welcomed the rap worlds tendency of crime and the brush with law to be the biggest reason to cover a 'rap' act . Not their music nor their show.

While I detest reality shows and am a President Obama supporter, the theme I stuck to that came out my grill was to tell all to 'pay attention'. Pay attention is what we all could afford to pay, if we take the time to comprehend what we see and hear. Sht, the coachella crowd couldn't really take it all in what they've heard about good or bad all these years, by watching and hearing the stage. Many were too young or media be it radio- viacom chased them away with their perception of us. Too deep.

Cool, my take on the Obama Perception in one big swoop. We been saying the New World Order has been taking place the entire span of our beats and rhymes. The governments responsible is underlined on Yo Bum Rush The Show. The presidential position has been a glorified showcase seat for over 50 years. The world is run by banks and bankers who stir the masses into them asses having people believe false gods, borders , orders, philosophies, controversies and conspiracies. There's political 'duct tape' on the wrists and grill of the USA President that will make the position support Israel not Palestine, not attend the Racism Conference in Durban South Africa, and have tentative discussion with Cuba and Chavez in Venezuela while having both the Prison and Military Industrial Complexes respectively swell on his watch.

But those of us that 'know' knew this coming in. Looking realistically at 'hourglass' change, not some on off switch effect here. Cool then ..I say 'pay attention" regardless... to the planet as well as the beat of your inner self. I have already stated my reasons why I like this man Obama as president knowing damn well that his job is 'Posiition Impossible'. Beyond this perception being a weapon of mass distraction, there is always the chance of some good coming out of it via some default. As with the Flav situation some blackfolk woke up in anger but never knew Viacom existed or the New Whirl Odor. They asked silly questions about Flavs character which many knew was crazy from minute one while clueless on how media, government, and technology worked, while being consumers to the end for each respectively never respectfully.

Truth is truth it belongs to everybody. Recognition of it is the task. It falls like rain on all below it. The perception of effect is the trip, some gonna think the god for the blessing of the water, others gonna complain about getting wet. Some gonna protect their head yet enjoy being within the element, while others will tell all the worry of drowning in it.

Pay attention. .. It's the cheapest price to pay. Pay attention beyond your nose. The people mad at Griff probably believe Lincoln freed the slaves. After 3 years of handling Flav-Viacom , I welcome Griffs' controversy on his opinion. Although I don't necessarily agree on all points personally about the President here, the job and position still has rust from the black blood left on the blade, and this always leaves room for commentary. Bring it On.

NIGLECT

Coachella we played on the third night. Paul McCartney played the first. Tired of hearing about if PE is relevant , then wondering why don't they ask white rockers the same sht. Sir Paul was making music before 95% of that concertgoers births, yet the media had no other choice to submit and committ. Much of this is hip hops infrastructureless fault. Dumbasses at the wheel. I been screaming at this niglect for years... This past month hot me hard again. I couldn't make it to Clrveland for Run-Dmcs induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, as I was speaking in Indiana.

The collective black urban media attention to this was bullsht as it was with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five 2 years ago. Run and D requested I perform but I was booked and couldn't. Sent then each a congratulations text and mail, and I thought Eminem did a , and great 'real' speech. Again the hop hop worlds silence was defening. No big pun intended. Reducing the music to ringtones, Tune adjuster choruses, and r&b claimjumpers is one thing... But not exalting it's high accomplishment is yet another diss arrow is another.....sht Raheim of the Furious 5 complained to me last year at a ZULU anniversary he didn't even have a jacket.

JIMMY FALLON SHOW

Had a great time Jimmy Fallon Show. Of course turning around a email quickly to make it happen right after everyone was in town for Flavors 50th birthday celebration down the block at BB Kings. I remember the same format for the man he replaced CONAN O BRIEN at 50 Rockefeller Center. ?uestlove and the Roots are always accommodating and humble. We talked about some special projects and of course will be playing live in Philly JUNE 6th at their picnic event. Playing NATIONS as a celebration. The possible recording of the album caps a request by ?uest at 2008 ROCK THE BELLS in Cali where he wanted to remix the record and do something at DEF JAM/ Universal. Of course the company didn't give a fk. Now there are better ideas upcoming , stay tuned. Or 'tweet' him. I heard he's on it religiously.

FLAV 50

It was raucous , and crazy and everything that goes with it. It was star studded. Iceberg T , Melle Mel, others made it happen at BB KINGS. SLAMjamz Artists Kyle Jason and Crew Grrl Order performed in front of the New York City crowd.

ATL Showcase and Stopping by Charles, Kenny and Ernie.

SLAMjamz subsidiary SuperNatural INC. had a showcase at Apache Cafe in Atlanta featuring KOFFEE , BIG V.E.L, and HUGGY. They got down well as well as the other acts on the bill. A woman named BOOGBROWN was amazing, as with another female rapper AYNJUL and her contingent from Oklahoma by way of ATL.

Afterwards myself and Brother James Norman stopped across the bridge to the TNT Studios to pay a visit to Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson Jr. Didn't wanna stay long and although I was invited for the playoffs 40 games 40 nights , I choose to not be on the tube or around come the playoffs, rather be just a fan. I can't stand seeing cats outside their element just to be on the tube. So I ain't gonna be the one , beside I been on TV before.

TWITIOTS

It seems that we are overdosed with social networking , but this Twittering takes the case. Seems that everybody wants to be a star with their own media center. Everybody wants to be the center of attention. So be it, but don't lose the ability to appreciate talking to or being talked to while being looked in the eye.

RUN DMC

How was this so silent in the black community? Hall Of Fame induction in Cleveland. I could've made it up there on a drive from lower Ohio but had to get back down to INDIANA U the next day. EMINEM held it down with a solid speech. Kicking myself because I could've enjoyed Fridays activities.

Spoke at Dennison University near Columbus OHIO, with my wife Dr Gaye Theresa Johnson to help the students get clear on issues regarding race, gender, and imagery through mass media. It was a two day wonderful event in a small liberal arts school. I often wish the structural organization of schools and colleges can be replicated in the record industry. Wishful thinking as 'ghetto greed mentality made it go down, not downloading. Rather 'loading it down' with drama and in raps case 'Niglect'.

Indiana U was a special occasion indeed in Bloomington IN that very same day that RUN DMC was inducted in Cleveland. The Organization had me speak there on a conference on DR KING and the importance of the OBAMA nation........ Attended great panels at KENT STATE appeared with queen rapper YO YO , ...... the next day at the U of PENN at CALIFORNIA with COMMON, Dr Tricia Rose , Poetess Ursula Rucker all about rap, images, and Hip Hop. wonderful panels ........and wrapped up speaking at St BONAVENTURE in Olean, New York where I keynoted on diversity , then afterwards drove back to NYC. Along the drive ( route 17 along the PA-NY border ) it seemed longer than the drive I took earlier in the week with my wife after Coachella. We drove cross country from CALI to ATL stopping in Albuquerque NM, then OK City then ATL , whereas I found parts of I-40 were the old route 66. .....But the drive from Buffalo to NYC, was loooong and I was in traffic behind a Amish horse and carriage in the town of Jasper NY.

Ernie Barnes

R.I.P to the great artist painter of our time passed. His great art was the scence backdrop to the 'Good Times' TV show if you don't know. Also Marvin Gayes ' 'I Want You' and a take off of his famed 'Sugar Shack' painting by CAMP LO. What got me is that the owner of his pro football team ,New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, offered to pay him $15,500 -- $1,000 more than Barnes had earned in his last season in football -- to develop his skills as a painter for a year. Werblin was so impressed with Barnes' work that he arranged a showing for critics at a New York gallery.

HARVARD

The Hip Hop Archive in Boston invited me up to do a panel At HARVARD where I spoke on a one on one panel and had a great time talking with Dr Marcelyina Morgan and witnessing such a gathered archive of such. Maybe the HIP HOP Museum if it doesn't get its act together SHOULD be elsewhere, if NYC and the Bronx can't happen. It's time ...infrastructure needs to happen in hip hop. Dr Dawn Elissa Fisher , Davey D, Brian Cross ( author of It's Not About a Salary... Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles: Rap, Race, and Resistance in Los Angeles)

MC BREED

R.I.P. to my man Eric Breed who I remember as a nice , humble cat from Flint Michigan. When I first heard the track 'Aint No Future In Your Frontin', I was impressed with the innovative way that he and his guys put together the song. Myself and Daddy O from Stetsasonic always were searching the rap planet for regional brilliance. The midwest always was slept on and rappers who didn't come from NY were forced to say the most black offensive things just to get noticed. Breed kept it to the funk and later moved to ATL and hooked up with Pac making some records for John Abbey and Nina Eastons Ichiban Records , who I was also affiliated with.

Uriel JONES of The FUNK Brothers R.I.P

Man, I met this man recently during last years R&B Foundation. I was supposed to give Mr Al Bell his award but was instead hanging in the press room with the FUNK BROTHERS. Very pleased and honored to meet the man. On the film the Funk Bros best jokes seemed to emerge from Mr JONES and Capt. JACK ASFORD the great percussionist who I've also been in touch with. MR JONES will be missed as with some of the others we've lost these past few years since Standing In The Shaows of Motown award winning documentary. Have had a few great conversations with Capt JACK and will look to interview him on my AIR AMERICA ON THE REAL SHOW, as he has some great unheard -new tracks.

DOC ELLIS

One of my Favorite baseball players ever. Known for pitching a no hitter on LSD , I just dug him because he was a black pitcher on an all black lineup while being a World Champion Pittsburgh Pirate in 1971. The Pirates hat I wear is in dedication to that all black team, Willie Stargell, Dock Ellis, Rennie Stennett, Gene Clines, Manny Sanguillen, Jackie Hernandez, Dave Cash, Al Oliver, and without a doubt the great Roberto Clemente.

SLAMjamz

Changes on some more sub-labels and further entertainment to download. SLAMradio will emerge in the same way that PE radio has happened. Hopefully PETV is coming very soon showing videos, TV shows , concerts and documentaries of Public Enemy, as well as SlamTV doing a similar thing with its artists. Other things like the SLAM Backboard will comment and be a place for other artists and labels to post.

J.PIVEN

Had the pleasure of hanging out with my favorite actor, Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold on my favorite show Entourage. He hit me up in LA and had tix to the WORLD SERIES of Baseball in Dodger Stadium. Sat down next to a guy who was silent for a while and later turned to me introducing himself as Paul Wall. Which he was. I said hello first, and he was so nice and humble as well. We linked text info....I said I'd pass on the grill....

BASEBALL

By the way Japan was kicking the Stataes azzes, figuring that the USA and the Dominicans are so paid that they really don't compete with the same passion for the game . So it seemed. Piven had a special parking space and tix. Having been invited to a few other Dodger games in the past , I also had to pass on as well. First the baseball cat in me reveled in being there at the Chavez Ravine wonder. The other 2/3 of me thought about the black/brown neighborhood that was leveled to build the stadium for the LA Coliseum based former Brooknam team, and the remaining part of me recalled playing a music concert there with U2 in 1992 in front of 50,000 people. Yeah its been a long and whining road indeed.

Upcoming Public Enemy Performances: **06/06/2009 - The Roots Picnic, Philadelphia, PA **06/12/2009 - Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN **07/03/2009 - 80/35 Festival, Des Moines, IA **07/25/2009 - FujiFest, Tokyo

(This will mark the Final Nation of Millions performance in this formation completing the showcasing of this album LIVE on the continents of North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Upcoming tours in South America and Africa pending. )

Chuck D

Public Enemy

www.publicenemy.com

www.SLAMjamz.com

myspace/chuckdpublicenemy

Plato And A Platypus.....

2009-03-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a review of a book that I'm currently reading. The book is entitled "Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar". Great book! -Papa Robbie

Pop Matters - by Rachel Balik

There’s a concept in Metaphysics called “emergence”. It is used to discuss, among other things, a mysterious process that make a collection of meaningless parts join together to become a being we recognize. For example, if arms, kidneys, fingernails, and even brains do not constitute a person without each other, what is the element that definitively unites them as human being.

Similarly, in Plato and a Platypus Walk Into A Bar, some kind of dorky jokes and some shallowly explicated philosophy emerge to become a rather charming and engaging collection that feels a bit like a warm fuzzy blanket for nerds, or anyone else who needs an excuse to laugh at relatively tame jokes. The philosophy of the book is easily understood in the small chunks, and in turn, it brings a bit of gravitas to a collection of delectable but completely cheesy jokes.
The philosophical concepts are neatly and lightly juxtaposed with jokes that successfully illustrate them. Part of the fun of the book is realizing just how much philosophy contributes to jokes we’ve already heard, but also makes a subtler point about how both philosophy and jokes attack the meaning of what it is to be human. Most people know that’s philosophy’s goal, but they may believe that fully grasping it is impossible. Many who feel that philosophy is not for them, or is incredibly esoteric, will be eased into by the realization that in fact, it’s as natural a commentary on our lives as humans as jokes about boobs are.

Perhaps what’s most essential about the book is not that it proves that philosophy is the impetus behind jokes, but that it proves that philosophy is like humor. The authors tend to match each paragraph or few paragraphs of philosophical inquiry with a joke that illustrates it. To borrow some formal logic, this seems to imply a causal relationships: If philosophy, then Jokes. But the truer explanation of what’s at work here is: If alive, then philosophy and/or jokes.

Even those of us who don’t consider ourselves great ponderers of the human condition may realize that in telling jokes, we’re subtly teasing ourselves into testing what it is we truly know. To be Buddhist-minded about it: life is tough. We need to find ways of getting ourselves through it, and for some that’s philosophy while for others, it’s humor. For readers of this book, it may likely be both.

To be fair (and state the obvious), it’s stronger as a book of jokes than it is as a collection of philosophy. You may find yourself reading and think, “Kant is easy! Everyone said Kant was hard to understand, but this is simple, cute and funny.” Well, caveat emptor: that joke about the doctor who can’t see the invisible man only touches the tip of the a priori ice berg.

The real genius revealed here lies not that which is in the mind of the German philosophers, but rather in the minds of the authors. Anyone with a rigorous understanding of the philosophical theories discussed will inevitably be impressed that Cathcart and Klein so adeptly made these fascinating and nearly abstract connections and juxtapositions. (Someone less educated might incorrectly assume that she now understands Kant.)

That being said, a philosopher (with a robust sense of humor) will probably get a good healthy laugh and even some food for thought based on their interesting method of tying together these two disparate methods of enquiry. In addition to some good jokes, there are a few legitimately engaging questions raised. For example, is a joke about a man who marries a woman based on the size of her breasts alone an anti-feminist joke, or an anti-chauvanist joke? Would new age philosophers be embarrassed or annoyed if they heard the joke about aliens stopping on earth to discover bagels—and recommending cream cheese?
In other words, the book, like philosophy and like most jokes, vacillates between sincerity and complete irreverence. However, it never feels irrelevant, and given that it’s sole topics are philosophy and jokes, that’s quite an achievement. The jokes become more important when couched in terms of philosophy, and the philosophy grows more contemporary because it’s described as the father of humor. Jokes feel smarter and philosophy feels easier.
Ultimately, humor, not philosophy, is the take home message. It’s obviously funny (almost giggle out loud funny) to imagine philosophy and jokes smushed together in the same book. It’s a philosophical idea as well, and as the authors are both philosophy majors, they no doubt recognize that humor can provide insight to philosophers.
But at the end of the day, while I wanted to retell all the jokes I read, even as a philosophy major myself, I was hard-pressed to remember any of the concrete ideologies. I half-jokingly said that I decided to read it because I thought it would prepare for me graduate school in the fall. While it did prepare me for school in that it affirmed my incredibly quirky tastes, it also reminded me of just how cavernous and complex philosophy can be. Ha.Ha.Ha.

Roy C.

2009-03-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today I had the opportunity to speak with a legendary rhythm & blues artist who hasn't received the respect that I think he deserves. We spoke for 45 minutes about various things...religion, politics & of course music. The brother is deep & I LOVE his music. He is one of the last of the real SOUL singers. GIVE HIM HIS PROPS!

Roy C (alternatively Roy-C or Roy "C") (born Roy Charles Hammond, 1939, Newington, Georgia), is an American southern soul singer, songwriter and record executive, best known for his 1965 hit, "Shotgun Wedding".

He began singing tenor with The Genies, a vocal group in Long Beach, Long Island, who were offered a recording contract by the record producer, Bob Shad. Their first single, "Who's That Knockin'", reached #72 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1958,[1] with Claude Johnson (later of the duo Don and Juan) on lead vocal. The group then moved to Atlantic Records, with Hammond taking over as lead singer, but their recordings were not released, and he was drafted into the Air Force.

When he returned to New York in 1965, Hammond organised a studio session to record his own song, "Shotgun Wedding", and released it under the name of Roy Hammond on his own Hammond label, before leasing it to the larger Black Hawk Records under the name Roy C. The record, with its novelty ricochet opening and relatively risqué subject matter for the time, reached #14 on the national R&B chart.[1] It had even greater success when issued in the UK, reaching #6 on the UK Singles Chart in 1966 and #8 when reissued in 1972.[2] His first album was That Shotgun Wedding Man (1966) on Ember Records.[1]

After some unsuccessful follow-ups on the Shout label, Hammond started another new label, Alaga. Working with guitarist J. Hines, he had more success with "Got To Get Enough (Of Your Sweet Love Stuff)" making the R&B charts in 1971. Two years later he signed for Mercury Records, and had another R&B hit with "Don't Blame The Man". He also released an album, Sex and Soul, and several more minor hit singles. He stayed with Mercury for several years, until label bosses took exception to his outspoken political stance in songs, like "Great Great Grandson of A Slave".[citation needed]

Since 1979 he has continued to release a string of soul singles and albums, on his own Three Gems record label, initially based in New York and later in Allendale, South Carolina. Hammond composed most of his recordings and has more than 125 titles to his credit.[1] He recorded an album by ex-Temptation Dennis Edwards entitled Talk to Me, and also worked on a CD by Bobby Stringer.[1] Hammond also runs his own record shop in Allendale, called Carolina Record Distributors.

In 1998, Shaggy sampled Roy C's "Love Me, Love Me" on the soundtrack of the movie, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.[1] Equally, Hammond released an album entitled Stella Lost Her Groove in March 1999.[3]

There is currently a documentary being made about Roy C. It is titled Roy C. Forever. For more information on the film visit:

www.roycforever.blogspot.com

Study Says Hip-Hop Dumbs Listeners Down

2009-03-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

Truth & Substance
Study Says Hip-Hop Dumbs Listeners Down
03.16.2009
Tolu Olorunda

"Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show."
--Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays. New York: Peoples Book Club, 1949, pp. 253.

In a recent study conducted by Virgil Griffiths, a PhD student in California, Hip-Hop music listeners are portrayed as unintelligent and intellectually deficient. The independent study, titled "Music That Makes You Dumb," found that those who listen to Lil’ Wayne, T.I., Kanye West, Jay-z and Ludacris (the usual suspects) are, essentially, dumb. On the contrary, listening to Beethoven, U2, Bob Dylan, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens displays intellectual sophistication. Excuse my coarseness: BULLS**T! We’ve been through this before. We need not pretend otherwise. For how long do we entertain these barrages of insults, before responding back?

From the early days of Hip-Hop’s christening, to this very moment, there have been those—and they are certainly in no short supply—who have tried to diminish its cultural value, and render it unworthy of critical evaluation. Their primary aim is to discredit Rap music as an art-form, by focusing squarely, and disproportionately, on the more negative elements it produces. Those detractors claim that Hip-Hop culture/music cannot be celebrated with the kind of scholarly discipline other music genres enjoy, because of its unorthodoxy and irreverence. Every conscientious musicologist is aware of this trend, as it concerns Black music. For those who think this uncritical obsession with Black art began with Hip-Hop, think again.

As far back as the early 20th century, critics of Jazz music were questioning its validity. An article dating back to August 1921, published in Ladies Home Journal, asked the question: "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?" It began with the eerie suggestion that "an entirely different type of music might invoke savage instincts." The writer sought to qualify her argument, with claims that Jazz "disorganizes all regular laws and order; it stimulates to extreme deeds, to a breaking away from all rules and conventions; it is harmful and dangerous, and its influence is wholly bad." Sound familiar? Deriding it as "an influence for evil," the article went as far as laying some unfound scientific foundation for its indictment on Jazz: "A number of scientific men who have been working on experiments in musico-therapy with the insane, declare that while regular rhythms and simple tones produce a quieting effect on the brain of even a violent patient, the effect of jazz on the normal brain produces an atrophied condition on the brain cells of conception, until very frequently those under the demoralizing influence of the persistent use of syncopation, combined with inharmonic partial tones, are actually incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, right and wrong." It is imperative that Hip-Hop listeners are aware of this history, for it helps provide some context to the endless excuses given by those who regard Hip-Hop as musically insolvent.

Hip-Hop, since its inception, has worn a cloak of suspicion, and this makes it even more challenging to accept the sudden interest it has accumulated over the last decade. Those who, three decades earlier, characterized it as another variation of “Jungle music,” are the same suits who, today, sign the checks of many successful Hip-Hop artists. More than the question of legitimacy, however, Hip-Hop has been heavily criticized for its alleged anti-intellectualism stance. It is said to covet ignorance, unlimitedly. It’s most vocal antagonists are skillful in examining the extreme elements in the culture, and using those unfortunate seeds as the general evaluation of the fruits it bears.

What I hope to ask these esteemed scholars is if they ever heard of a Rapper by the name of Canibus. If they haven’t, it might help to familiarize themselves with him. They might be surprised to hear Canibus draw, without so much as breaking a sweat, on the essays of philosophers ranging from David Hume, to Socrates, to Michel Montaigne, to Descartes. They might find it curious to hear him mention the names of renowned physicists, such as Leó Szilárd and Niels Bohr. They might be dumbfounded by his of knowledge of historical landmarks, all the way from the Rose Line, to Mount Hermon, to the Library of Alexandria. Perhaps they might be amazed to hear his incorporation of Elizabethan poetry in his songs. I’m wondering if they might be astounded by his hypothesis that, "if you take a glass of water then add two cubes of ice," because "you should see the cup’s water level slightly rise," it begs the question: "if you remove every living animal out of the sea, then wouldn’t the world’s ocean water level decrease?" His theory that "this means the planet wasn’t three-quarters of water," should invalidate all studies suggesting an intelligence-deficit in Hip-Hop listeners/artists. More important, is the reality that Canibus is but a sea in the vast ocean of Hip-Hop artistry, which, as KRS-One repeatedly contends, "reign supreme" in their philosophical depth and poetic proficiency.

What intentional/unintentional critics like Virgil Griffiths fail to realize, is that their inability to celebrate the educational contributions of Hip-Hop lies in the inherent assumption that Hip-Hop’s uniqueness is a bad thing. They fail to recognize that, as Dr. Janice Hale put it succinctly, "different DOES NOT mean deficient." Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay on "The Poet," dated 1844, makes a similar point, asserting that "the same man, or society of men, may wear one aspect to themselves and their companions, and a different aspect to higher intelligences." These "higher intelligences" have, unfortunately, convinced themselves, that Hip-Hop’s refusal to adapt to the rigid mechanical standards of organized rhythm is a signifier of its inferiority. This tragic and misleading concept, is what inspires the kind of study Mr. Griffiths conducted.

The easiest thing to do, as Griffiths proudly did, is reduce Hip-Hop to the stereotypical representations and dialogical presentations seen on entertainment TV channels, and heard on radio stations. It’s convenient to summarize Hip-Hop by the loose antics of Lil’ Wayne, Ludacris or Kanye West. It’s effortless to see Hip-Hop through the prism of the one-sided, mono-syllabic, unilateral content entertained on mainstream channels. Alongside being convenient and effortless, however, it’s also a cowardly deed, and, according to a Hip-Hop scholar, an indicator of unfettered ignorance. Wake up Griffiths, the bells are calling!

Keeping Them Dumbed Down?

2009-03-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile

By Patrick Grimm
Tuesday, March 3, 2009

It’s no secret that the US educational system doesn’t do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America’s schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can’t find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was.

Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system—overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can’t pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to.

How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America’s public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America’s formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing.

Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools—the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America’s educational system.

In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee’s report stated, “We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes.”

By the turn of the century, America’s new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn’t to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

Writes Gatto: “Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about ‘the perfect organization of the hive.’”

While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by “certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process.”

In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population—mainly the children of the captains of industry and government—to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren’t often publicly expressed, they’re apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001:

I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn’t have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, “They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world…that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world.”

John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2001), is the source for all of the above historical quotes. It is a profoundly important, unnerving book, which I recommend most highly. You can order it from Gatto’s Website, which now contains the entire book online for free.

The final quote above is from page 74 of Bruce E. Levine’s excellent book Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2001).

Barack History Month VS Sleep RAPnea?

2009-03-08T11:03:00.001-07:00

Barack History Month VS Sleep RAPnea?

February 11, 2009
Will the Election of President Barack Obama raise the Standard of Black People in America, while Erasing the Hip Hop version of SLEEP RAPNEA?

Writing this days before the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of The United States, it struck me we had a double remembrance day of sorts coming up. Dr Martin Luther King's birthday holiday is nationally recognized on January 19th this year, and the inauguration is the next day, January 20th. These two days ring special to me, though this ring has been tainted.

Some years I don't make resolutions: rather, I opt to make a plan. Entering 2009 has led me to reposition myself in regard to the notion of dealing with the 'truth'. Saying and telling the truth seems to have been this thing that many of my black American-born people have side-stepped these past 15 or 20 years, for the sake of maybe not being accepted into white American mainstream society - which translates into simply not being popular. I would say that the 'truth' in many cases simply is the truth and not subject to interpretation. It belongs to everybody and not just anybody. Here's my take, as a black man nearing the half-century mark next year, who's seen and heard much in his time, and who's been fortunate to have listened to many who have told me their experiences before my time.

Just on the man tip alone, my father, grandfathers, uncles, fathers of friends, father-in-law and many a male voice that has reflected their lives, opinions and times have all bent my ear and thus brain in a way that has prepared me for being twisted by the lies, hype, and myths that corrupt and damage the masses of people who look like me. That part of me ain't never changed, and is never gonna change. There's been times that I've been silent because I've been taught to let others speak, as if recognizing we are all in this together. But sometimes I forget that not everyone comes from the same dynamic that molded my senses in the first damn place, and thus that is the time to speak: to put the nonsense in check before it becomes 'common nonsense' - something that those that knew better would endorse to wipe out what was left of 'common sense' in the Clinton '90s.

I have been asked my opinion by many media across the planet about what I think regarding BARACK OBAMA, just like they're asking droves of people across the board in sports, entertainment, life itself. Some even connect some of the hysteria to some degree of separation, like Barack and Michelle's first date seeing SPIKE LEE's Do The Right Thing. OK. Or some people say that the impact of Public Enemy was a possible inspiration any black person in the late '80s and early '90s could not avoid, like maybe the Jordan Bulls or something. Again, OK. While half-agreeing to some of this pop culture residue PE left in our impression, the fact is that our music was manifold, including the fighting for equal legitimacy for rap music and hip hop, rebelling against one-sided government policies whether it was R&B (Reagan and Bush), Margaret Thatcher, an imprisoned South African - Nelson Mandela - the Berlin wall, a world history of black diaspora slavery and oppression, the local New York one-sided racist coverage and policies, and many things that required a mind and brain to go with some voices on top of some funky James Brown shit.

I know President BARACK OBAMA remembers that standard being inspirational in rap music. As a grown man meeting his future wife, Fight The Power could've meant many things, but we know this for sure: it wasn't an embarrassing aspect of culture for this grown man to take inside of himself for possible mental, maybe physical, energy. This was'nt for kids: although, unlike today's hip hop, you have the stupidity of 40 being the next 30 being the next 20, feeding and pimping off young audiences like a virtual paedophile. Even though he might say JAY Z and KANYE are on his iPod, and THE FUGEES and LAURYN HILL are in his rap heart, he doesn't have to say, nor state, that Public Enemy is somewhere in the back of his mind or even in his soul. He doesn't have to mention it. It would be redundant. He doesn't ever have to mention that he was inspired by Minister FARRAKHAN's inspirational MILION MAN MARCH in 1995. Doesn't even have to say he was there. His STANDARD does all the talking in the world. He is entering the terrordome, and he is ready to deal.

Yes, the terrordome, for real: a hot seat that no other black man in the universe can relate to. The pressure will be either coal-crushing or diamond-making. He can handle it. He's made for it. And ready for it. But who is ready for him? The STANDARD is high because the STAKES are, like DE LA said.

I was commissioned by HIPHOP.COM to write my opinion as an international voice. I figure both my experience and standard in the rap music end, and my being a black man near 50, would rank as qualification here. Older than BARACK by a hair, I would understand his timeline. Knowing those places he's been - from Chicago, Hawaii and Wichita to Africa – would give me a sense as well. Having integrated hip hop in my soul from 1975 to right now allows me to speak here. With all that said, like I've pointed out in other pieces and interviews, for the first time if I was ever to meet the man I would salute him proudly and call him MR PRESIDENT sir, and not feel an ounce of disappointment saying it - all the while knowing he is in a position to make decisions that will batter some black individualism. Who said that the individual needs to stand out beyond the team anyway, other than self-accountability and responsibility? This is a test and a chance for the black community to use this collective to connect and unite and look within - the chance for the black and the brown to connect, then the like-minded to come together and truly figure how, starting from a possible new America, the human can finally be 'in'.

Knowing that this is an opportunity to liquidate 'inspiration', I know that PRESIDENT OBAMA is not the messiah nor savior for a 'race'. He is the President of The United States. For The United States. A United States taking a desperation hurl to place itself up as being the TIGER WOODS of nations. He will make decisions that will both make me clap and wince, some of it at the same time. So this is a time to pay attention, and hang on to the 'truth' as much as possible. This also means telling the truth amid the blizzard of lies, and against the hyping that drives the intelligent and the knowing to the point of silence. We are entering a time where talk will be very cheap and no excuses will or should be the rule.

I understand I might be called a hater here: I will wear the badge then, because it's easy to hate something that shows the people no love. I would rather be hated for what I am instead of loved for what I'm not. But in this case, if you don't stand for something you fall for anything: and hip hop has fallen because of negligence and somebody kicking its class down a corporate American staircase.

What does the arrival of Obama do for hip hop? What do I think? Well, no more excuses for the lies and the liars who have deceived the public into believing much of the negative stigma and hype that gets attached to black people. Hip hop's standards in integrity, respect and truth took a wrong road. It followed the downward spiral of entertainment, or maybe entertainment followed it in marketing sense, where you can always market negative aspects of a people who have been downtrodden. In the early rules of hip hop, the participants' collective thinking always meant that you knew that there were taboo areas to trek into, thus cats always wanted the tree to grow and the branches to spread when they were fed. This individual-centered greed was prevalent in the 'get mine' 1990s, aka the terrordome. Forget a standard, it was said.

It could've started when rap still didn't have the black industry or the social backing in the '80s as being legitimate. The collective silence and inability to say anything in the music could've happened after watching an anti-Semitic attachment being applied to PE in 1989-1990, thus scattering anyone black from that point approaching any truths or debatable facts about white folks and their business or social/historical behaviors toward black people. It has been hysterical to witness the amount of "bitch", "ho", "nigger" uses, drug gaming, gang shootings in the last 15 years promoted in rap, as opposed to any rapper saying the words "white", "cracker", "kike", "Jew", while at the same time being contracted and working under corporations dominated by members of those constituencies. At the very same span the individual money rose on the bloodshed through a Clive or an Iovine, into the Spooks of the negro hands to eventually bling the culture out, and to say little of redeeming worth and value. Damned be the negro intellectuals and journalists who co-signed a lifestyle of downwardness in their one-sided biased coverage that they judged as hip and mistakenly added hop to it. I remember certain writers from different cities falsely locking into a New York state of mind or a California Love and calling it by the standards that those cities' corporations set. Black radio has failed terribly just chasing the falling dollar. EmpTy V, Viabomb and BET has been a joke, a Booty En Thug fish-tank that would be made more telling by turning the volume down and just flashing the images: images transmitted across to OBAMA's KENYA, only to have somebody in Nairobi scream out 'Yo My Nigga' in sick so-called love.

The President BARACK OBAMA and his family will hopefully set a precedent because many like myself are tired of rap fronting and not saying what it really believes. God, family, seeds, love, hood, moms, and loyalty is always coming out of the mouths of many until the mixing of money. I remember cats in London and Philadelphia being transformed into a '90s New York mentality, only because the culture was falsely magnified from major labels there who worked to squash all other voices, styles and forms of hip hop from other places. The woman voice and opinion in rap was diminished, although the body was used and abused with collective silence amongst the violence.

With all of this said, even today, in the shadow of a dual day for black inspiration, we have groupings of people flocking to the theatres to catch the Notorious B.I.G story: a story of the tragic result of a brilliant kid that was raised in a supportive West Indian protective way, who gets social props for being the black nigger America wanted. A loss of a great potential, but at the same time, very little inspiration other than to stay far away from the radiation that lifestyle emits.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA is an inspiration to the rest of the planet, especially to those feeling disenfranchised in their second and so-called third world situations. But to the black diaspora this is really B.I.G. - beyond the movie and the rapper. This is reality. A new standard can be recognized here.

The excuses are over. Those in this human race who are not considered black that say they love hip hop should recognize the legacy of the people largely exploited through the negative portals of this music. We will soon see if all this support at hip hop's magnified worst will be backed up when it takes the positive route. When the standard of black people is raised it's interesting how the western world gets nervous. This has held true about the continent of Africa and its independence. What attitude will come with the standard being raised with black folk in America, as they act upon PRESIDENT OBAMA's inspiration? And so to the last question: will the black American rap and hip hop world re-emerge with the knowledge, wisdom, understanding, class and respect of its President and awake from its 'sleep rapnea'?

We will see.

We will hear.

PEace, Chuck D New Email chuckd@publicenemy.com

Peep the new relaunch of www.SLAMjamz.com FEB 20 WITH SLAMTV and PETV On www.publiceney.com

Can You Relate?

2009-02-02T18:04:00.001-08:00

President Obama's 1st Inaugural Speech

2009-01-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of the President of the United States faithfully1, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.

Thank you.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you've bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential Oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the Oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to "set aside childish things."2 The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.

All this we can do.

All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers -- Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience'[s] sake. And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States of America.

I'm Not An Eric Clapton Fan.....

2009-01-03T11:32:00.000-08:00

Besides the fact that I think he's an overrated copycat...this is why I'm not an Eric Clapton fan and never will be....

"Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I'm looking at you. Where are you? I'm sorry but some fucking wog...Arab grabbed my wife's bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that's just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking (indecipherable). I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking (indecipherable) don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!
o Quoted in Rebel Rock by J. Street. First Edition (1986). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 74-75. Street's sources are editions of the New Musical Express, Melody Maker and the Guardian and Times newspapers from the time.

Other Sources: Virgin Media: Clapton's Shocking Rant Guardian Unlimited: The Ten Right-Wing Rockers.

(These statements were allegedly made on stage by a heavily drunk Clapton during a concert in Birmingham, UK, in 1976. Clapton is referring to British anti-immigration Conservative MP Enoch Powell. Clapton later made similar further comments to the audience later in the evening. Clapton has never denied making these statements and has refused to apologise for his remarks or distance himself from them, although he denies that his views are racist and states that he is merely an opponent of mass immigration. This incident was the main inspiration for the formation of Rock Against Racism).

* Clapton went into a rap about Enoch. His initial line was "Enoch's right - I think we should send them back." I don't think he said "nigger" he said "wogs". He definitely said, "Keep Britain White". Nobody cheered, but after he played another song, he did the same again. It was extraordinary - but he stood there being overtly offensive and racist. I was completely mystified as to why this man playing black music would behave this way."
o Author Caryl Philips, referring to the aforementioned Birmingham concert in 1976, at which Phillips was present. Quoted by author Robin Denselow in When The Music Stopped: The Story of Political Pop, Faber and Faber (1989), pp. 138-139.

On the Socially Unconscious Artist......

2009-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

On the Socially Unconscious Artist:
An Open Letter and Analysis to All Black Artists

By

Heru Ofori-Atta

"Socially unconscious men should not be allowed to prosper."
-- The Honorable Dr. Amos Wilson

If you are not a serious student of Black history, from classical Nile valley civilization to the present, I don't want you rapping, singing, or reciting poetry to me. Period. If you are unaware of the trends in Black history, it is scientifically predictable that you will make a fool of yourself, and your people collectively. Since I am part of the collective Black people, I am pre-emptively asking you stop, before you get started with your musings-- today. These are serious times. Clowns and unaware artists are no longer funny. Artists are the primary purveyors of images and thoughts, particularly to the youth. Our youth are mentally dying in the casket of Americanism, and your pitiful existence is not helping to change the tide.

Recently, I was asked to participate in a panel discussion along with other artists of African descent. We were all from different areas of the planet, but what we had in common was our African lineage and collective history of white domination and exploitation. This is the unifying thread of all Black people worldwide, as none of us, from our particular groups, have found an effective program to fully eradicate the manifestations and implications of the ubiquitous plague: white supremacy.

More specifically, there were eight artists on the panel. All of the panelists were Black. Two artists were from the African continent, two were from the Caribbean, and the remaining four were from the U.S. All of the artists were "famous" in some form or another, through television, radio, and/or print media. The topic of the day was the responsibility of artists to their community, entitled, "Art and Social Responsibility." More specifically, can and/or should social responsibility exist within art? It immediately struck me that only in America, the land of the technically free, would this topic be up for debate.

Predictably, the panelists were divided in opinion. All of the artists from the Continent and the Caribbean were of the opinion that the purpose of art was to uplift the minds of the people. Of the Black artists from America, three were proudly, firmly and stubbornly against the notion of art being socially responsible, and one was on the fence.

In this essay, I will summarize and analyze the position of the dissenters. Their position was that artists should be "free" to say whatever they want. They did not want to be "restricted" to only deal with issues of African upliftment. One artist said if he wakes up in the morning and feels like writing about having sex with groupies and smoking (CIA) crack, he would write it and feel "proud" to perform it. After all, that's what freedom of speech was about. A recurring theme was they did not want to be "pigeon-holed" as conscious artists. Another recurring theme was they didn't want to preach to their fans. I informed them that when an artist sings, raps or performs poetry "bragging" about their shopping habits and new acquisitions of illusory splendor, they are in fact preaching about their stance on materialism. They commented that I was reading too much into it. I agreed. I also said that was the purpose of art: to be read too much into.

I informed them that in ancient Egypt, one could not become a musician unless they mastered certain subjects like philosophy, physical sciences, mathematics, history, writing and religion. Our great ancestors were aware of the power of music and would not allow imbeciles to wield a grain of power. Some of my co-panelists were visibly offended, but I believe in equality because their words offended me also. At the very least, our relationship was balanced by my "offensive" remarks.

Besides the disgust I felt towards these artistic mercenaries, I also felt pity for them. It was clear that they had been brainwashed out of caring for or about anyone but themselves, and had embraced certain elusive American catch phrases such as "freedom of speech" and self defeating concepts such as rugged individualism. Mostly, the aroma of laziness permeated their being. For it is laziness, in fact, that causes an artist to be detached from the awareness of historical trends and forces which inform the present day situation of the so-called individual and the people. Because of their laziness, they were oblivious to what history requires of the Global Black Artist.

This writing is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on the pathology of the aforementioned artists. However, it is meant to highlight some basic themes. Most readers are familiar with the shallowness of their positions just as the seated audience that violently reacted to the dissenting artists. For those of you who agree with the positions of those artists, just remember Dr. John Henrik Clarke's words, "Europeans took what was sacred to us and made us shun it, and eventually laugh at it." That explains what made the dissenting artists not want to be "pigeon-holed" as conscious, but at the same time they don't mind being "pigeon-holed" as so-called gangsta.

They definitely don't mind being pigeon-holed as "Grammy winning artist so and so…" It is clear that pigeon holing was not the real issue. The real issue was being called something- in this case "conscious" -that to sane people would be a sacred compliment, but to insane people it is shunned or even laughable. So in their insanity and disconnection from an awareness of historical forces, they proudly discarded the sacred nature of being referred to as a conscious artist. The dissenters actually laughed at it in accordance with Dr. John Henrik Clarke's quote. These are the types of Black people who say "Black Power" to each other as a running joke of mockery. However, they are the same Black people who love to have power for themselves- individually. The idea of Black Group Power is what they are mocking. Remember, they are short-sighted rugged individualists: true Americans.

I suspect that the main focus of this type of artist is making money and therefore being popular. In his dead-end struggle, he has become the quintessential American. With America as the last superpower, and global representative of white economic and military supremacy, being American is the precise opposite to being African. In turn, to be an African, in the scientific historical sense, is to be the perfect opposite of being an American. To be American- the last bastion of totalitarian world whiteness and domination- in today's terms, is to be hyper-white in your tastes, interests and values. Rugged individualism is the cornerstone theory of whiteness, therefore, when someone says that their personal interests are more important than their community, they are being an American in its most descriptive and ideological sense. Communalism means nothing and is to be avoided in the American reality. This implicit law is witnessed in the phenomenon of neighbors in America not knowing each other- at all. Travel anywhere in the world, and only in European/whiteness based societies will you see this phenomena.

Another benchmark for being an American is to be a proponent of capitalism. The true American will promote it, even if he himself is a victim of it. Capitalism is the academically refined and polite substitute for the word slavery. In slavery, everything created by the slave is property of the slave-master. This is seen in record companies who always own the intellectual property of all of their artists' creations. In fact, the artist's album which belongs to a record company is called a "master". In real contractual language, the record company is free to "exploit" the album in perpetuity (forever). The artist has agreed with this arrangement for a pittance-crumbs-compared to what the slave master record company receives. All of this is done in exchange for fame. In other words, the powers-that-be say, "You are still a slave, based on our relationship, but I will allow you to broadcast the illusion that you are free and have 'freedom of speech'" to the other slaves, from which of course, I rescued you from. That way you can satisfy your empty ego, and I can build my empire. Thanks for the album, nigger. Or nigga, as you like to be called."

The famous slave then goes through an interesting psychological experience. He now has his ego stroked in many ways he never even dreamt about. He feels forever indebted to his slave master for at least making him a slave with privileges. Since he doesn't really own his intellectual property, he is in it for the temporary ride. This poor slave ends up trying to emulate his slave master and ends up giving his money back to the slave master or the slave master's associates and extended global white power family. The slave must have a Mercedes or any other overpriced German, Italian or British car. But to whom does he turn his temporary wealth over for the merchandise? A close or loose business associate of the slave master. Big pimpin' indeed.

The cycle goes on. However, since the slave is American in terms of ideology only, but not an American in terms of ownership rights, he is literally the illusion of a vested, bona fide American. The privileged slave is a sucker. He has no interest in creating his own industry of ownership. So in his frustration, the slave with privileges attempts to compensate for his need for power by becoming not a free man, but a second degree slave master to his own people. He thereby emulates the white slave-master, the savior and simultaneous killer of his dreams. Therefore in his art, there are all types of signs of Black hatred. Here are eleven scientifically observed signs:

(1) There is no sense of Black historical continuity. Veneration of ancestors is missing from their artistic discourse. In fact, they do not glorify their own ancestors, but rather the ancestors of others. Therefore, Italian mafia names are taken. Chinese cultural group names are taken, etc. Anything but Black. The names of authentic Black heroes and sheroes are never uttered.

(2) Any form of commerce that hurts Black people will be promoted relentlessly, ie. the CIA crack trade, referred to as "hustling." In this reality, Black lives mean nothing. Money through poisoning and addicting a vulnerable people is the order of the day. Here, the hustler aligns himself with, Marlboro and Philip Morris, in not so fine American tradition. Because, this hustler is unaware of historical forces, he is unaware of the Opium Wars and his complicity as an agent or asset of the powers that seek to destroy his own family. He is also unaware that during the Opium wars between China and England, where England was pumping opium into China, the Chinese executed all Chinese people who sold opium to their own people and considered them as traitors not heroes.

(3) The pimp is glorified. The pimp is a street way of saying slave-master of women, particularly Black women. The pimp has replaced the white slave master in relation to the life of a Black woman and her sexual powers as a source of wealth. He feels as if he owns her like property, and is the owner of any wealth she may produce. He in turn clothes her, feeds her and consistently brutalizes her based on his fleeting emotions and strategic ideas of implementing discipline. Pimp = Slave master in every sense.

(4) The elevation of Black women is refused. Because this privileged slave is for all intents and purposes an agent, asset or ally of the white supremacists, he focuses on keeping Black women- the bringers of all Black life- marginalized through imagery, lyrics and artistic intent.

(5) The elevation of Black children is refused. Since these artists are hysterical personalities, they have no meditation towards the concept of continuity. They have no foresight, therefore, the well-being of those who would inherit the future are not part of the equation. These socially inept artists are "here and now" people. Their whole life revolves around what feels good "right now." They also feel no sense of responsibility towards the global African community and barely feel a sense of responsibility towards their own children. They are the experiment referred to in the novel, Lord of the Flies: a people who have been cut off from elders and have to improvise throughout life, based on immediate sensations.

(6) His/her art is consistent with Cointelpro directives towards the stagnation and eventual retrogression of any and all Black Power movements, locally, nationally and internationally. S/He is the "breakthrough" artist waiting in the wings, patiently at bay, until Black consciousness becomes a strong part of Black cultural expression.
At the critical juncture where Malcolm X the Black liberation/Pan-African freedom fighter becomes the model to be emulated by the Black masses, the privileged slave is "put on" and subsequently "blows up" by pushing images of Malcolm Little aka Detroit Red, The Pimp and hysterical, hopeless, hapless, helpless negro without a cause, as the figure to be emulated. Through millions of dollars spent on advertising, Malcolm Little aka Detroit Red, the self-styled pimp gains more popularity than Malcolm X the freedom fighter. The privileged slave has served his master well. However, his master will of course charge all advertising money against the slave's royalty account.

(7) His/her art serves the overall purpose of setting the mood of ushering his own people back into slavery. This is seen through the lack of analysis and overall lack of awareness of a very real prison industrial complex, which is updated slavery version 5.0, Crackers Reloaded,the Empire Strikes Back, the Phantom Menace: The Sequel.
Prison is where a branch of particularly virulent unabashed white supremacists realize their pipe dreams. This branch of white supremacists are called conservatives in the pop-culture American political lexicon, but more accurately are cheap labor conservatives or more succinctly, slave masters. They are conservatives, because they wish to conserve the America of old, and therefore slavery. To them, this was America at its best. So they are the architects and executers of a web of entrepreneurial and legislative cooperation where Black people will be enslaved again and will work for free or close to free for $1.25 per hour making diverse products for the real pimp/cheap labor conservative/slave master to sell and thereby strengthen and maintain the white empire.
The socially unconscious artist/privileged slave is but a cog in the wheel of this simple yet elaborate economic machinery. This artist's only job is to make being enslaved/jailed seem cool. The slave master will of course take care of the rest.

(8) Their art is focused on the "bragging" about purchasing overpriced toys, gadgets and shiny things, referred to as "Bling, Bling" manufactured and sold by the slave master.
Due to his newly acquired merchandise (ego), this privileged slave wants to believe that his people love him, but is simultaneously suspicious of them, because deep down inside he is not convinced that he should really be loved by a people whom he vigorously and openly hates.

(9) This slave has no sense of shame in his art and is completely oblivious to the meaning of the word inappropriate. For instance, s/he would perform an explicit song about oral sex to a group of nine year old children and not see anything wrong with it (This is not an exaggeration, I have seen it). S/he will also perform a song/chant whose chorus is "Kill that baby. That baby ain't mine (© Trick Daddy, October, 2004, Howard University Homecoming)." In the same vein, s/he will perform songs about killing random other "niggas" for an audience and a community which is routinely heartbroken by the loss of loved ones due to de-contextualized and niggafide gun activity.

(10) To the trained ear and eye, it is clear that if in the proper historical place and time, this is a person who would have sold his/her own people to slavery to gain favor with the white kidnappers, not knowing s/he would be kidnapped and enslaved very soon by the same savior and simultaneous killer of his/her dreams.

(11) This slave will take credit for being "dope" but will not take credit for being a "dope". Although s/he is the poster child of anti-intellectualism, s/he is angered when called dumb. If you ask him/her what was the last book s/he read, the conversation reaches a rare silence and is followed by anger for even being asked that question. When the slave masters' TV shows broadcast the overpriced lifestyle of the privileged slave to the world, as if to say this should be the implicit goal of the viewers, no books or a library is ever shown at this "great" person's house.
Objectively, this type of slave is so pathetic, if he wasn't so valuable to the empire of slavery, the slave masters would kill him and relieve him of his misery. Even the slave master is embarrassed by this type of slave. Through the public acceptance and popularity of these artistic and general slackers, the powers-that-be have found another ingenious way to make a fortune and engineer their desired social agenda.

Because this type of artist serves no use for the upliftment of our people, his/her portion of the African meal should be death. As Dr. Amos Wilson said, "Socially unconscious men should not be allowed to prosper." Therefore the socially unconscious artists, does not necessarily have to be killed physically, but, s/he must be killedeconomically, socially, and psychologically. In the household of those interested in being African, the socially unconscious artist is considered dead. The fact that s/he even existed is only brought up as traitors and idiots are brought up in conversation to illustrate to others what not to be.

In the African conversation, the shamed dead person's name may not even be uttered for fear of giving him/her renewed life through the power of the word. If the name of the accursed is mentioned, the African will usually spit on the ground immediately thereafter in order to re-bury this wretched person back into the bowels of the earth. In this ritual, we say "poor Earth." We have feelings of compassion for the Earth, whenever it is contaminated with such a foul and malodorous being. However, we suddenly realize that the Earth uses cow dung and other feces as fertilizer. In this case, human waste and a waste of a human are identical. With this meditation, we are celebratory of the Earth's ability and genius to transform even fecal waste, into something useful.

Goodbye Ms. Kitt

2008-12-26T10:25:00.000-08:00

OMG!

2008-12-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Ummm....Evander, there isn't enough money on the planet to do this....

Sometimes....

2008-12-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

...words just aren't necessary.

WOW

2008-11-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

I never thought that I'd see it. Never thought that it could happen in my lifetime.

Soulja Boy gives a shout-out to slavemasters....

2008-11-01T13:05:00.000-07:00

This is why I'm at war with ignorant rappers.....

Soulja Boy gives a shout-out to slavemasters....

By Toure

One of the biggest songs in the country last year was an inane, sex-chant-infused Southern rap called "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," by young Soulja Boy Tell Em, from tiny Batesville, Mississippi, population 7,113. Soulja Boy Tell Em turned 18 this summer and is looking forward to voting for the first time. His monster hit song included repeated assertions of a cartoonishly absurd sex act: supermanning, or as he elaborated repeatedly in the song, "Superman that ho," which means to come on a woman's back and then put a sheet over her so it sticks to her back and she looks like she's wearing a cape. Ridiculous stuff. He also chants repeatedly, "Supersoak that ho," the meaning of which needs no explanation, given the neighborhood we're already in.

These are ludicrous suggestions that play into the Cro-Magnon conception of men using sex and sperm to attack and slay women. It's such a mean-spirited vision of sex that every time I heard the record I thought, I bet that before this came out, he was a virgin.

I asked him, "What historical figure do you most hate?" He said, "Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa."

Last week in Atlanta, I got to interview Soulja Boy Tell Em. I found out just how young he really is. He was one of about ten rappers I interviewed in one day for my BET show, The Black Carpet. I decided it'd be fun to give all the rappers part of the Proust questionnaire. I thought it'd be a way to get beyond image and into who they really are. Most of the guys gave good, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive answers. I asked Juelz Santana, "How would you like to die?" He said, "Loved."

Then came Soulja Boy Tell Em. I asked him, "What historical figure do you most hate?" He was stumped. I said, "Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters..." He said, "Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa."

My jaw, at this point, was on the ground."We wouldn't be here," he continued, having no idea how far in it he'd stepped, "to get this ice and tattoos."

Wow. Never mind that diamonds come from Africa. Never mind that there were many generations of pain in between leaving Africa and getting diamonds. Never mind that the long-term cataclysmic effects of subtracting about tens of millions of young, strong people from Africa over the course of a couple of centuries is a large part of the reason why Africa now appears so distasteful to you. Never mind all that, Soulja Boy. You put country first.

Ignorance Is Everywhere....

2008-10-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

By MICHELLE DeARMOND
The Press-Enterprise

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.

She said she doesn't think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

She said she also wasn't trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: "Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!"

Club Member Cries

Sheila Raines, an African-American member of the club, was the first person to complain to Fedele about the newsletter. Raines, of San Bernardino, said she has worked hard to try to convince other minorities to join the Republican Party and now she feels betrayed.

"This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party," she said. "I'm really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes."

The Obama campaign declined to comment. It's the campaign's policy to not address such attacks, said Gabriel Sanchez, a California spokesman for the campaign.

The newsletter prompted a rebuke from another African-American member of the organization, which is well recognized in the community for its philanthropy and efforts to register and turn out voters in the Rancho Cucamonga and Upland areas.

Acquanetta Warren, a Fontana councilwoman and member of the women's group, said the item is rude and requires a public apology.

"When I opened that up and saw it, I said, 'Why did they do this? It doesn't even reflect our principles and values,' " said Warren, who served as a Republican delegate to the national convention in September and is a regional vice chairwoman for the California Republican Party. "I know a lot of the ladies in that club and they're fantastic. They're volunteers. They really care -- some of them go to my church."

Warren forwarded an electronic version of the newsletter to the California Republican Party headquarters, where officials also were outraged Wednesday and denounced the illustration.

Hector Barajas, the party's press secretary, said the party chairman likely will have a conversation with Fedele, and Barajas will attend the statewide California Federation of Republican Women conference this weekend in Los Angeles to handle any news media there to cover the controversy.

Pastor Calls Out God's Reputation!

2008-10-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

This would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. This pastor actually believes that God belongs to a particular party and belongs to one religion....And tells God that his reputation is at stake! Have mercy.

Family Values???

2008-10-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

REALLY???

2008-09-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

Clay Aiken just came out of the closet...well, I have an announcement to make myself.
I'm a bald-headed Black man!!!

She's Gone Too Far This Time!

2008-09-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

RIP Norman Whitfield

2008-09-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

Norman Jesse Whitfield (May 12, 1940 – September 16, 2008) was an American songwriter and producer, best known for his work with Berry Gordy's Motown label during the 1960s. He is credited as being one of the creators of the Motown Sound, as well as one of the major instrumental figures in the late-60s sub-genre of psychedelic soul.

Of the hit singles Whitfield produced in his 25-year career included "I Heard It through the Grapevine", "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Cloud Nine", "War", "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", "Smiling Faces Sometimes" and "Car Wash". Alongside his Motown lyrical collaborator Barrett Strong, he was inducted to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2004.
Early career with Motown

At 19, Whitfield began hanging around at Motown's Hitsville U.S.A. offices, trying to get a chance at working for the growing label. Gordy recognized Whitfield's persistence and hired him in the quality control department that determined which songs would or would not be released by the label. Whitfield eventually joined Motown's in-house songwriting staff. Whitfield had a few successes including co-composing Marvin Gaye's early hits including "Pride & Joy", The Marvelettes' "Too Many Fish in the Sea" and The Velvelettes' "Needle in a Haystack", but he found his place at Motown when he began producing the recordings of his songs. His big break came when he took over Smokey Robinson's role as the main producer for The Temptations in 1966, after his "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" performed better than Robinson's "Get Ready" on the pop charts.

From 1966 until 1974, Whitfield produced virtually all of the material for The Temptations, experimenting with sound effects and other production techniques on the earliest of his records for them.[1] He found a songwriting collaborator in lyricist Barrett Strong, the performer on Motown's first hit record, "Money (That's What I Want)", and wrote material for the Tempts and for other Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight & the Pips, both of whom recorded Whitfield-produced hit versions of the Whitfield/Strong composition "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." The Gladys Knight & the Pips version was the best-selling Motown single ever to that point, but it was replaced a year later by Marvin Gaye's version.

After Temptations lead singer David Ruffin was replaced with Dennis Edwards in 1968, Whitfield moved the group into a harder, darker sound that featured a blend of psychedelic rock and funk heavily inspired by the work of Sly & the Family Stone and Funkadelic, and also began changing the subject matter of the songs, moving away from the trademark poetic romance to the social issues of the time, such as war, poverty, politics, etc. The first Temptations single to feature this new "psychedelic soul" style was "Cloud Nine" in late 1968, which earned Motown its first Grammy award (for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance by a Duo or Group). A second Best R&B Group Performance Grammy for Whitfield and the Tempts came in 1973 with "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone." The instrumental B-side to "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" earned Whitfield a Grammy with arranger Paul Riser for Best R&B Instrumental Performance, and Whitfield and Barrett Strong shared the songwriters' award for Best R&B Song.

The psychedelic soul records Whitfield produced for the Temptations and other artists such as Edwin Starr and The Undisputed Truth experimented with and updated the Motown sound for the late-1960s.[1] Longer song durations, distorted guitars, multitracked drums, and unusual vocal arrangements became trademarks of Whitfield's productions, and later of records produced by Motown staffers he coached, including Frank Wilson. But friction and antagonism continued to grow between Whitfield and the Temptations during this time because the group disliked how Whitfield put more emphasis on instrumentation instead of their vocals and the group disliked that he would not write romantic ballads for them. However, by this time Whitfield was producing hit records for Edwin Starr, the Undisputed Truth and Rare Earth (band)
Whitfield Records and later years

In 1973, Whitfield left Motown to form his own record label, Whitfield Records. In the beginning, his only act was The Undisputed Truth, which he had convinced to leave Motown. They never really had much more chart success, but Whitfield had a smash hit in 1976 with Rose Royce's "Car Wash", issued on MCA Records. Rose Royce (whose members were originally Starr's backing band while at Motown) went on to produce three more popular albums, but never could top the success of "Car Wash," which served as the theme song to the 1976 motion picture Car Wash. The Car Wash soundtrack won Whitfield a 1977 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album.[1]

In the early 1980s, Whitfield began working producing for Motown again, helming The Temptations' 1983 hit single "Sail Away" and the soundtrack to The Last Dragon.[1]

On January 18, 2005, Whitfield pleaded guilty for failing to report royalty income he earned from 1995 to 1999 to the Internal Revenue Service. Facing charges of tax evasion on over $2 million worth of income, he was sentenced to six months of house arrest and a $25,000 fine. The producer was not imprisoned because of health problems such as diabetes.

Death

During his last months alive, Whitfield stayed bedded at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he underwent treatment for his bout with diabetes and other ailments. Within a few weeks before his death, Whitfield fell into a coma, which he eventually recovered from[3]. According to The Undisputed Truth leader Joe Harris, Whitfield died on September 16, 2008 at approximately 3:30 pm.

Production and songwriting

* 1963: "Pride & Joy" - Marvin Gaye
* 1964: "Too Many Fish in the Sea" - The Marvelettes
* 1964: "Needle in a Haystack" - The Velvelettes
* 1964: "He Was Really Sayin' Somethin'" - The Velvelettes
* 1964: "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)" - The Temptations
* 1966: "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" - The Temptations
* 1966: "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" - The Temptations
* 1966: "(I Know) I'm Losing You" - The Temptations
* 1967: "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" - Gladys Knight & the Pips, also recorded by Marvin Gaye and Creedence Clearwater Revival
* 1967: "You're My Everything" - The Temptations
* 1967: "I Wish It Would Rain" - The Temptations
* 1968: "I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You)" - The Temptations
* 1968: "The End of Our Road" - Gladys Knight & The Pips
* 1968: "Cloud Nine" - The Temptations
* 1969: "Friendship Train" - Gladys Knight & the Pips
* 1969: "Runaway Child, Running Wild" - The Temptations
* 1969: "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" - Marvin Gaye
* 1969: "I Can't Get Next to You" - The Temptations
* 1969: "Don't Let The Joneses Get You Down" - The Temptations
* 1970: "You Need Love Like I Do (Don't You)" - Gladys Knight & The Pips, also recorded by The Temptations
* 1970: "Psychedelic Shack" - The Temptations
* 1970: "Hum Along and Dance" - The Temptations (later covered by Rare Earth and The Jackson 5)
* 1970: "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)" - The Temptations
* 1970: "War" - Edwin Starr
* 1971: "Smiling Faces Sometimes" - The Undisputed Truth, originally recorded by The Temptations
* 1971: "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" - The Temptations
* 1972: "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" - The Temptations
* 1973: "Masterpiece" - The Temptations
* 1973: "Let Your Hair Down" - The Temptations
* 1976: "Car Wash" - Rose Royce
* 1976: "I'm Going Down" - Rose Royce
* 1976: "I Wanna Get Next to You" - Rose Royce
* 1977: "Ooh Boy" - Rose Royce
* 1977: "Wishing on a Star" - Rose Royce
* 1978: "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" - Rose Royce

It's Going To Get Worse

2008-09-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.

David Nammo, executive director of the lobbying group FRC Action, said summit organizers were told the boxes were a parody of Obama's policy positions but had not examined them closely.

Republican Party stalwarts Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were among speakers at the forum, which officials said drew 2,100 activists from 44 states.

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.

On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for "Open Border Fiesta Waffles" that says it can serve "4 or more illegal aliens." The recipe includes a tip: "While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?"

The novelty item also takes shots at 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, Obama's wife, Michelle, and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The Obama campaign declined to comment.

Wearing white chef's aprons, Whitlock and DeMoss were doing a brisk business at noon Saturday selling the waffle mix to people crowded around their booth. Two pyramids of waffle mix boxes stood several feet high on the booth's table.

"It's the ultimate political souvenir," DeMoss told a customer.

Asked if he considered the pictures of Obama on the box to be racial stereotypes, Whitlock said: "We had some people mention that to us, but you think of Newman's Own or Emeril's — there are tons and tons of personality-branded food products on the market. So we've taken that model and, using political satire, have highlighted his policies, his position changes."

The socially conservative public policy groups American Values and Focus on the Family Action co-sponsored the summit.

Let's Spin....

2008-09-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Spin

Black teen pregnancies? A 'crisis' in black America.
White teen pregnancies? A 'blessed event.'

If you grow up in Hawaii you're 'exotic.'
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential 'American story.'

Similarly, if you name your kid Barack you're 'unpatriotic.'
Name your kids Trig and Track, you're 'colorful.'

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're 'reckless.'
A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a 'maverick.'

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review,create a voter regstration drive that registers 150,000 new African Amerian voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, you've got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an 'arrogant celebrity'.
If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are 'energizing the base'.

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are 'presumptuous'.
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a 'shoot from the hip' maverick.

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are 'an elitist 'out of touch' with the real America.
If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an 'empty suit'.
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an 'experienced executive'.

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are 'extremist'.
If you believe in creationism and don't believe gobal warming is man made, you are 'strongly principled'.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years with whom you are raising two beautiful daughters you're 'risky'.

If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you 'First dog.'
If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you 'beautiful' and 'courageous.'

Something To Ponder.....

2008-09-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon...

2008-09-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Think About It.....

2008-09-02T12:46:00.001-07:00

I Can't Wait For The Debates!!

2008-08-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

I'm Just Sayin'....

2008-08-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

Obama Skywalker

2008-08-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Obama just gave his acceptance speech...it was amazing. I know that it was truly amazing because even Pat Buchanan loved it....there must be a crack forming in the earth.

Cognitive Dissonance

2008-08-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

There will be lots of this going on up until the election...

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling or stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a fundamental cognitive drive to reduce this dissonance by modifying an existing belief, or rejecting one of the contradictory ideas.

Often one of the ideas is a fundamental element of ego, like "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." This can result in rationalization when a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice, or in other cases. Prevention of cognitive dissonance may also contribute to confirmation bias or denial of discomforting evidence.

You know....

2008-08-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's just best to shut up.

JAMES...JAMES...JAMES

2008-08-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Soul Survivors
James Brown's Children Are in Court. They Might Have Settled for Love.
By David Segal
Friday, August 8, 2008; Page C01

LaRhonda Petitt was a 4-year-old making mud cakes in the back yard the day her mother beckoned her inside to look at the television. "That's your daddy," her mother said, pointing at the screen. There was James Brown singing "Please, Please, Please."
It took a few months for LaRhonda to realize that her mother wasn't kidding and that her uncle was not, as she initially assumed, her biological father. Ten years later, after her mother's death -- during surgery, in 1975 -- LaRhonda worked up the nerve to call James Brown, tracking him down in a hotel room in Birmingham, Ala., in the middle of a tour.

"I wanted you to know that my mom passed away," she told Brown, once he was summoned to the phone by an assistant.

"What you want from me?" he snapped. "I'm not your daddy."

For a moment, LaRhonda had the sensation of falling through midair.

"My mama told me this," she choked out, "and I'll believe it till the day I die."

Last year, LaRhonda's belief was put to a test. As part of the bitter, grabby melee over James Brown's estate -- a fight that now encompasses 10 lawsuits, 30 lawyers and enough theatrical hostility and cheap shots for a night of professional wrestling -- the court set up a procedure to test unacknowledged potential heirs of the Godfather of Soul.
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Now a 46-year-old mother of two in Houston, LaRhonda learned about the tests through a friend. She and her lawyer visited a LabCorp office, where a technician took a swab of saliva from her and dropped it into a sealed container. Her DNA profile was then compared to Brown's, from a sample of bone marrow extracted from his leg shortly after his death on Christmas Day 2006.

LaRhonda never had doubts about the results. She believed the story her mother had always told her: that in 1961, when Ruby Shannon was 27, she had visited relatives in Los Angeles who took her to a James Brown concert, where she was approached by a man who asked if she'd like to meet Mr. Dynamite himself. A few weeks later, back in Houston, she started telling friends she was pregnant with James Brown's baby. Most of them laughed.

By the time LaRhonda was a teenager, she could see the truth of her mother's story whenever she looked in a mirror. She so uncannily resembled James Brown that when she went to his concerts in Texas, her face was her backstage pass. Guys at the door would take one look and wave her through.

Over the years, she would push gifts into his hand, usually photos of her own children -- his grandchildren. But he never warmed to the paternal role, so in her 30s LaRhonda tried to quit caring about James Brown and tried to stop looking like him, too. She dyed her hair bright silver, she wore blue contact lenses.

It didn't work. She never stop craving the affection of the national idol who she believed was her biological father. Plus, she was divorced by then and could have used some financial help -- which she thought she was owed, because James Brown was rich and he'd never given her anything other than a face that she didn't really like and that reminded her, every day, of a great void in her life.
So LaRhonda went to concert after concert.
"I was on him like a canker sore," she says with a laugh. "I never would quit. That's the James Brown in me."

The James Brown in LaRhonda would become a matter of legal fact courtesy of LabCorp, which determined a 99.99 percent probability that the "Hardest Working Man in Show Business" was indeed her father. Later, a woman in Florida and a woman in Canada would step forward and pass the same test. The three have since spent a lot of time bonding on the phone, comparing life stories and plotting legal strategies. All three now want the courts to give them what their father never did: respect and full recognition as heirs of James Brown.

"What is rightfully mine should be rightfully given to me," LaRhonda says, her voice rising. "Nobody knows what I went through as a kid. Nobody knows. There is a debt here. There is a debt."

The Payback

Papa has left quite a mess.

An epic, Superfund-size mess that just keeps getting messier, which, we can safely assume, is not what Papa had in mind. A control freak who once said that he ran his band the way a warden runs a prison, Brown demanded total obedience from both employees and kin. If you couldn't play by his rules, you were fired or shut out.
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This was life with a man who considered himself a figure of destiny, and it is impossible to separate his tyrannical impulses from his historic, up-from-nothing career. He was ever the tireless, hyper-competitive titan of funk, a 5-foot-6, 135-pound tornado who never stopped spinning. His career spanned dozens of hits and 50 years.

It ended soon after a trip to his dentist's office in Atlanta, where he was to get new dental implants screwed into his jaw. "He said, 'Doc, I'm going down slow,' " recalls Terry Reynolds. Sent to a hospital, Brown died of congestive heart failure caused by pneumonia, even as he talked about an upcoming New Year's Eve concert in New York City.

With Brown gone, whatever order he once imposed has vanished. A circuit court in Aiken, S.C., has become the main stage for a probate fracas so complicated and bitter that some of the lawyers involved have hired lawyers and started suing one another. Brown had at least 10 children -- including the three newly certified daughters -- with at least seven women, only four of whom he had married. Or maybe it's just three. The court has yet to determine whether the last wife, Tomi Rae Brown, was ever legally married to the guy (since she may never have annulled her previous marriage to a Pakistani man). Still undecided, too, is whether her son, James Brown II, is actually James Brown's son. He was conceived after Brown claimed to have had a vasectomy.

All of these people were treated equally in Brown's rather straightforward five-page will, which is to say that they were equally shafted. Well, not totally shafted. Six of his children were given the not-so-grand prize of the "personal household effects" in his mansion. The education of his grandchildren was taken care of through a trust. (Yes, the "new" grandchildren, too.) But the pot o' gold -- his home, music catalogue and the rights to market his name and image -- were left to the I Feel Good Trust, to educate underprivileged kids in South Carolina and Georgia.

A man who rose from the grimmest poverty, Brown seemed to hate the idea of bestowing riches on anyone, his children included. But five of the six children named in the will want it tossed out. They have accused three of their father's former business associates, who were trustees of the estate until they quit a few months ago, of siphoning millions from his accounts. The sixth child, a son named Terry Brown, contends that his half siblings should be cut out entirely, because of a codicil that dispossesses anyone who contests the will.

James Brown's putative widow is seeking half the value of the estate, which she might just get under South Carolina's "omitted spouse" rule -- if she can prove she was actually married to him. Then there are the children, like LaRhonda, whom Brown sired on the road.

We're just getting started.

Two of the original trustees have filed motions to withdraw their resignations, arguing that they were bullied into leaving by the judge. (The third original trustee is otherwise occupied; he's been threatened with jail time if he can't come up with the $373,000 in royalty money he admits to misdirecting to his own account.) The two new trustees are suing all three original trustees, claiming fraud and negligence. The attorney general of South Carolina has jumped in, to protect the charitable education trust. And many parties are questioning the validity of the will -- which, by the way, was drafted by an attorney now in prison for killing a club owner who'd ejected him for stripping while awaiting a lap dance.
"I'm 60 years old," says Robert Rosen, an attorney for Tomi Rae Brown. "I can imagine in 10 years being dragged out of an old-age home to argue this before the Supreme Court."

The case is so intractable that it verges on dark comedy, although only now have we come to the punch line: The estate of James Brown is broke.

Beyond broke, actually. It's about $1.6 million in debt and in what a judge called "deplorable" condition. How, you might wonder, could the coffers of the man who wrote and performed "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" and "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose," to name a few hits, and who toured virtually nonstop for decades, be empty?

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This is a mystery.

What's certain is that the estate is so strapped it has auctioned off a few hundred personal items that were recently hauled out of Brown's mansion. Naturally, this flabbergasted the Brown heirs who inherited the stuff, but the trustees have broad discretion to keep the estate solvent. In mid-July, the high-end garage sale at Christie's raised just over $800,000, gaveling away Soul Brother No. 1's minks, capes, his red vinyl bucket-seat sofa, his Kennedy Center Honors medal, his jumpsuits with "SEX" stitched across the waist, his dome-shaped hair dryer and much more. The money will be used to pay tax bills and overhead, including legal costs.

Once revived and properly marketed, the estate of James Brown could be worth $100 million or more. But for now, everyone other than the lawyers remains empty-handed -- which is what makes this shambles so quintessentially James Brown. Aloof, temperamental and utterly self-obsessed, Brown spent his adult life surrounded by family members who wanted his love and attention, neither of which he would give them. With love and attention now out of the question, his family wants money, and they're not getting that either, at least not anytime soon.

James Brown couldn't give it up. The legal system can't turnit a loose. So far, the litigation has done little but crowbar open the very private life of James Brown, which he'd spent his career trying to keep under seal.

Locked Out

The massive wrought-iron gates at the entrance to the 62-acre grounds of James Brown's mansion in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia border, are locked with a chain, along with a sign that reads "Warning: Anyone entering or leaving the premises will be searched." One recent humid afternoon, Deanna Brown Thomas stared through the gates at the half-mile of road that leads to the house, described by those who have seen it as a cross between a French chateau and a vintage Cadillac.

Deanna lived here for four years in the late '70s, along with her sister and her mother, Brown's second wife. "I learned to drive on that road," she said, looking at the empty path. "I drove down here to pick up the mail."

Now, this is as close as she gets. Everyone needs permission and an escort to enter Brown's home these days. And for as long as that's true, Thomas and the four siblings she is allied with have refused to part with their father's body -- which the court granted them early in these proceedings -- even though they all believe that ultimately he should be buried in a mausoleum next to his house. There's talk of one day turning that house into a Graceland-style museum.

Thomas won't say much about the current location of the body. But if pressed, she will shake her head wearily and complain that, frankly, providing round-the-clock security for a casket holding a colossus of pop music is kind of a headache. Which is as close as she'll come to acknowledging what everyone around here knows: The earthly remains of James Brown are stored in a crypt in her yard.
"You don't think someone would try to dig it up?" she asked, when quizzed about her discretion.

"I was at the barbershop the other day," adds her husband, Shawn Thomas, an immense and goateed former bodyguard of Brown's, "and someone said, 'Is it true that he's buried in a gold casket?' I said, 'I don't know.' "

Earlier that day, the Thomases sat in a restaurant in Augusta, Ga., a city not far from Beech Island and the place where James Brown spent much of his childhood. The conversation turned to life with "Mr. Brown," as everyone, even his daughter, calls him. He sounds like the kind of guy who should have come with a 600-page owner's manual.

"If it was during the day and he called and said, 'I want to see you,' you'd go home and put on a nice shirt and tie," Shawn Thomas recalls. "I'd have to drive home and put on a suit. It got to the point where I just kept a nice pair of slacks and a shirt in my car, because otherwise you couldn't go there."

The worst that Deanna will say about her father is that he was one heck of a disciplinarian. But the more you know about her, the greater the sense that being part of James Brown's life was not much easier than being excluded from it.

The two had some very public disputes over the years. In 1998 she had him committed to a psychiatric hospital because she thought drug use was wrecking his health. ("One thing Deanna knows," Brown told the Augusta Chronicle as he returned home, "she's not getting any more money out of me.") Then there was the lawsuit she and her sister Yamma filed against their father six years ago, seeking back payments for royalties on 23 songs for which their father had given them co-writing credits, back in the '70s, when they were kids. (It's assumed that Brown did this for tax-avoidance purposes, not because Deanna truly had a hand in composing "Get Up Offa That Thing.") The case was settled out of court.

"My dad asked me to file that lawsuit," she now insists. "He said: 'I don't think you're getting the money you're owed. You need to get a lawyer.' "

Could this be true? Even if Brown were around to tell us, his answer could change each time we asked. Those who knew him best describe the man as fundamentally unknowable.

"I spent a year living with him, and I can tell you that even at home, with his head in his hands, he never relaxed," says the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime protege who moved to Beech Island for a period to help run Brown's business affairs.

"You can study him starting now and into the next century and still not come up with more than what you started with, other than his greatness," Sharpton adds. "He was a puzzle, and nobody was ever shown all the pieces. Because he believed that if someone figures you out, they can duplicate you, or they can stop you."

Brown never stopped mystifying his loved ones, and he never stopped testing them, either. When Shawn Thomas asked for Deanna's hand in marriage, he didn't ask his future father-in-law for money for the wedding. He knew better than that.

"Because he was still wondering, 'Is he in love with my daughter or is he in love with my pocket?' " Shawn says. Brown did agree to sing a few songs at the reception, reminding Deanna: "This is a $50,000 show I'm giving you!"

"But then after the wedding, he gave me a check that more than paid for the wedding," says Shawn, shaking his head and grinning in a way that says, you just never knew with this guy.

'Where He Came From'

Any discussion about the puzzle of James Brown must start, as such discussions always do, with his childhood. He spent much of it in a penniless part of Augusta, a few miles from nearby Barnwell, S.C., where he was born. His mother left him when he was 4 -- she would resurface years later, when Brown became famous -- and his father, who tapped pine trees for sap to sell to turpentine mills, handed 6-year-old James to an aunt who ran a whorehouse. Neglected and often alone, he shined shoes, danced for spare change and ate what he called "salad in the woods" when there wasn't any food. He dedicated his 1986 autobiography to "the child deprived of being able to grow up and say 'Momma' and 'Daddy' and have both of them come put their arms around him."

Abandoned at a young age, Brown became a serial abandoner, a hustler certain that everyone was trying to hustle him. Bootsy Collins, the bass player and one of many musicians whom Brown fired from his band over a minor disagreement, describes his onetime boss as a musical genius he can't help but pity.
"I had this puppy I had when I was a kid in Cincinnati," Collins says in a recent phone interview. "And this puppy was really sick, and I took it to the vet, but they wouldn't admit him because, you know, I was a kid and I had no money. And this puppy died right there in the lobby. And I always felt that something like that happened to James Brown. That loss is unspeakable, and he just didn't want to be attached to anyone."

Much has been made, said Collins, of the ways that Brown went berserk late in life -- there were violent outbursts, reports of PCP use, a high-speed chase through Augusta that earned him three years in prison for aggravated assault.

"But to me, the amazing thing is that James Brown stayed sane for as long as he did," Collins says. ". . . Think about where he came from and what he accomplished, think about what it was like to be James Brown. It took a supernatural man to keep his sanity for as long as he did. Only James Brown could have done that."

And only James Brown could yield this singular morass. Other than accusations and billable hours, it has produced little more than the most un-Hallmark of family reunions.

In September, LaRhonda flew to South Carolina for one of the hearings in the various cases, mostly to assert her presence and to get a good look at her half siblings, none of whom she'd met. LaRhonda was ready to embrace them, but only Terry -- the son who wants the will executed as is -- would hug back. The rest of them, she recalls, were icy and wary, which in turn made LaRhonda icy and wary. The family values of James Brown live on -- arguably the one bequeathal that all his offspring inherited, without lawyers and without delay.

"They looked ugly," LaRhonda says of her siblings. "I didn't like the way they acted. They should be glad that we're together."

Deanna shrugs at the memory of meeting LaRhonda in court.

"It was 'Hi' and 'How are you,' 'Nice to meet you,' " she recalls. "She's a stranger. We share blood and some features, but that's pretty much it."

40 Years Later....

2008-08-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

40 years makes a huge difference doesn't it? Lawd have mercy.

Goodbye Isaac

2008-08-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

This is really too much in one weekend.

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - Musician Isaac Hayes died early Sunday morning, according to Shelby County Sheriff's Department spokesperson Steve Shular.

A Shelby County sheriff's deputy responded to Hayes' home after his wife found him on the floor near a treadmill inside his home.

Hayes was taken to Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, where he was pronounced dead at 2:08am.

Deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff's Department are continuing their investigation into Hayes' death, but they believe no foul play was involved.

Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008)[1] was an American soul and funk singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger, composer and actor. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served as both an in-house songwriter and producer with partner David Porter during the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s, Hayes became a recording artist, and recorded successful soul albums such as Hot Buttered Soul (1969) and Black Moses (1971) as the Stax label's premier artist.

Alongside his work in popular music, Hayes was a film score composer for motion pictures. His best known work, for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. He received a third Grammy for the album Black Moses.

In 1992, in recognition of his humanitarian work, he was crowned an honorary king of Ghana's Ada district. From 1997 to 2006, he provided the voice for the character "Chef" on the Comedy Central animated TV series South Park.

Hayes was found dead in his Memphis home on August 10, 2008 as reported by the Shelby County sheriff’s department. His death came 10 days before his 66th birthday.

Hmmmmm

2008-08-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

"Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."

----- John McCain at a 1998 Republican fundraiser.

Goodbye Bernie...

2008-08-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

This one hurt as much as George Carlin....wow...I can't believe it!

Comedian Bernie Mac Dies at 50

By Stephen M. Silverman
Bernie Mac, who for the past 30 years made the public laugh with an over-sized comic persona in film, television and comedy clubs, has died of pneumonia, PEOPLE has confirmed. He was 50.

"[He] passed away this morning from complications due to pneumonia in a Chicago area hospital," his rep, Danica Smith, told PEOPLE. "No other details are available at this time. We ask that his family's privacy continues to be respected."

On Aug 1, Mac was admitted to a hospital at Northwestern Memorial hospital with pneumonia said his rep, adding that he was expected to recover, despite widespread rumors about the seriousness of his condition.

Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough in Chicago, Mac began his career as a stand-up comedian in the small comedy clubs of his native town. As a founding member of the Kings of Comedy comedy tour – the success of which spawned Spike Lee's 2000 concert movie The Original Kings of Comedy (also starring Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer) – Mac was able to spotlight what would become his rapid-fire delivery. This effectively launched him into the big time.

The Bernie Mac Show, which ran from 2001 to 2006, often poked fun of Mac's own life and proved a favorite of both critics and audiences – receiving a prestigious Peabody Award, as well as honors from the Television Critics Association (for best individual achievement in comedy).

In addition, the program provided a popular platform for Mac to win consecutive NAACP Image Awards for outstanding actor in a comedy series, from 2003 to 2006.

Named top actor in a comedy series at the '06 ceremony, Mac clutched his trophy and reverted to his standup character, declaring: "America, I heard your prayers, and you wanted me here. The Mac Man cometh, and I'm bringing hell with me."

Movie Roles
He scored on the big screen, too. Among his appearances were those in the comedy Guess Who (as Ashton Kutcher's imposing, prospective father-in-law); the Ocean's 11 franchise; Bad Santa; Charlie's Angels; and Pride, costarring Terrence Howard.

This spring, Mac wrapped the upcoming film Soul Men, a comedy costarring Samuel L. Jackson about a former singing duo staging a comeback. He is also set to appear in Old Dogs with John Travolta, Robin Williams and Matt Dillon.

He also published a 2001 collection of comic riffs, I Ain't Scared of You and a 2006 memoir, Maybe You Never Cry Again.

In February 2005, Mac, then 47, revealed that for the previous two decades he had suffered from sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in organs such as the lungs or lymph nodes. "It has not altered or limited my lifestyle," he said at the time.

Since 1977, Mac was married to Rhonda McCullough, with whom he had a daughter, Je'Niece, born in 1978. A graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (with a bachelors degree in psychology and a masters in mental health counseling), Je'Niece married in 2003 and also has a daughter, Jasmine. His family survives Mac.

Wanted to Enjoy Life
In 2007, Mac told David Letterman on the Late Show that he intended to retire from standup comedy.

"It's going to be 30 years for me, and I'm going to call it," said Mac. "I missed a lot of things, you know. I was a street performer for two years. I went into clubs in 1977."

The years of hard work, Mac says, caused him to "miss out on so much, you know, and you live in all these hotels – I was on the road 47 weeks out of the year." As the comedian told Letterman, "I want to enjoy my life a little bit." enjoy my life a little bit."

Bernie Mac's Death: What Happened?
By Hilary Shenfeld and Ivory Jeff Clinton

Originally posted Saturday August 09, 2008 07:00 PM EDT
Bernie Mac’s wife and daughter were with him until the very end, says the late comic's sister-in-law in a personal and touching interview with PEOPLE that took place Saturday.

Speaking of a heartbreaking moment between her younger sister, Rhonda, and the 50-Year-old actor-comedian – who succumbed to complications from pneumonia in a Chicago hospital at 2 a.m. Saturday – Mary Ann Grossett says that the night before Mac died, "He struggled for his life. He couldn't breathe.

"He opened his eyes on his own and looked at Rhonda. She called his name, and he opened his eyes and nodded to her. She smiled at him and told him, 'Don't leave me … 'I'm waiting for you to come back.' He shrugged his shoulders, and she said that's when she knew he was tired. He signaled to her that his body was tired."

Rhonda, Mac’s wife since 1977, and their 30-year-old daughter, Je'Niece, 30, were with him when he died. "[The doctors] were working on him," says Grossett. "They tried to resuscitate him two times. One time he came back for about an hour. Then he went into cardiac arrest the second time."

Prior to that, the couple had last communicated on July 31. "He told his wife [non-verbally] that he could breathe on his own, and he wanted the ventilator out. He motioned that he wanted it out," says Grossett.

Lung Disease Contributed
The sister-in-law says Mac's inflammatory lung disease contributed to his death. "He had sarcoidosis, but it was in remission," she says. "But because he had it, his immune system was compromised. He had an infection ... He was on a new medication that suppresses the immune system, and that's where the pneumonia came from."

She reveals that Mac – having trouble breathing and running a fever – was actually hospitalized on July 24, eight days before the date given for his admittance. The actor was diagnosed with pneumonia and immediately placed on a ventilator.

"He was critically ill when he was in the hospital," says Gossett. "He was in intensive care the whole time."

She adds that doctors kept the star sedated, although he was conscious at times and he contracted a second strain of pneumonia while in the hospital.

His Wife's Reaction
Of her widowed sibling (like Mac, Rhonda is 50), Grossett says, "She’s devastated. However, she's at peace about his transition because of her faith in God. Her faith is what is sustaining her."

She says of the couple's enduring union, "They had 30 years of marriage. That's unprecedented in today's time, particularly for celebrities. That brings joy to her. They loved each other and respected each other on a daily basis. She was by his side to the very end."

Recalling the couple's early years, when they were still in their teens, Grossett says, "When they started dating, he said, 'Girl, you better come on board this train, because I'm going to be rich.' And her response was, 'Okay,' and they were married. That's how he charmed her, with his sense of humor."

She adds, "When they got married they were kids. He was 20 and she was 19. They both grew up together, and they both matured in this marriage.

'She's Going to Miss Him Dearly'
"What she will treasure the most is the fact that she was his wife for 30 years – and not only was she his wife, but she was his best friend. She's going to miss him dearly."

Mac’s funeral is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 15, at an undisclosed location. The family requests that donations be made to the Bernie Mac Foundation for Sarcoidosis, 40 E. Ninth St., Suite 601, Chicago IL 60605.

Brett Favre a JET???

2008-08-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

Emmit Smith - Arizone Cardinals
Joe Montana - Kansas City Chiefs
OJ Simpson - San Francisco 49ers
Michael Jordan -Washington Wizards
Tony Dorsett - Denver Broncos
....Nobody believed them then....and this surely won't work.

Wait a minute...I can't stand Brett Favre and I despise the Jets. The end is near! John Madden (and many other broadcasters) usually sound like they want to take Brett Favre on some romantic roll in the hay. Have at it people!

THE COWBOYS WILL TRIUMPH!!!

P.S. - To Jets fans....It's called GIANTS stadium for a reason.

WHOA!!!

2008-08-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

I posted my opinion about Ted Nugent being a racist a few months ago(August of 2007) and the anonymous message below is what someone left...I can't wait until November!!! I must be doing something right! Talk about proving my point! Toby Keith and Ted Nugent fans seem to have something in common.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Ted Nugent Needs His Clock Cleaned...":

You are a disgusting, vile piece of scum on the holy land that is Ted Nugent's taint! I hope you find a fucking steaming hole full of the vomit and shit of a tortured Jewish family, Ted Nugent brings you back to life with his original brand of metal, then ass rapes you with an inside out rattlesnake. Go fucking die you stupid excuse for a nigger!!!

Posted by Anonymous to PAPA ROBBIE.COM at 5:16 PM

The Joker is a philosopher....

2008-07-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

We just saw "The Dark Knight" and I must say that we enjoyed it. This summer they did everything right with superheroes. The Heath Ledger did an amazing job as "The Joker". I have a funny feeling that "The Joker" will move more merchandise than "Batman" this Halloween. "The Joker" has a twisted yet very intelligent personality that will appeal to the anarchist in all of us. It could be argued that he has a "super sanity" instead of "insanity" in order to cope with his little known past and his surroundings. Go see the movie and THINK about some of the things that "The Joker" says. He's not a typical villain. His motives aren't as tangible as most (this makes him an even better villain).

Best Rapper Alive?

2008-07-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Are these people serious? I remember when Rolling Stone & Time magazine were actually relevant (and in touch with reality)...I can think of at least 50 other rappers better than Wayne and they're all alive. This is some BULL...in related news
Golf Digest is declaring the best Public Enemy album.
MAD magazine is doing a special on the best Hemingway novels.
Tech Weekly will be listing the greatest Blues Guitarists Of ALL-TIME.

Here are 30 LIVING MCs that Wayne couldn't touch even if he stood next to....in no particular order off the top of my head.

1. Chuck D.
2. Rakim
3. Big Daddy Kane
4. Black Thought (of the Roots)
5. Jean Grae
6. Lady Of Rage
7. Nas
8. Canibus
9. Lauryn Hill
10. GZA
11. Method Man
12. Redman
13. Busta Rhymes
14. Common
15. MC Lyte
16. Brother J (of X-Clan)
17. Sean Price
18. LL Cool J
19. Paris
20. Mos Def
21. Ice Cube
22. Snoop Dogg
23. Andre 3000
24. Slick Rick
25. Jay- Z
26. Eminem
27. Scarface
28. K-OS
29. Grand Puba
30. Lupe Fiasco

Hmmmmmm

2008-07-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

Pet Peeves

2008-07-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

In no particular order...here are a few things/people that tick me off.

1. People that use the term "reverse racism".
2. People who argue about a topic without a decent historical context.
3. Anyone who has no clue about Prince's music outside of "Purple Rain"
4. Anyone who thinks that rock n roll started with Elvis.
5. Lil' Wayne
6. Flavor Flav
7. Dubya
8. Anyone that refers to pro wrestling as "fake". It's SCRIPTED people.
9. Black women with blonde hair.
10. Fans at shows who ask me to do "Red Red Wine".
11. Rush Limbaugh
12. Faux News
13. People who confuse Patriotism with Xenophobia (see numbers 11 & 12).
14. Southern Belles (they're pretentious and annoying).
15. People who use profane language in public places where children are present.
16. BET/ MTV
17. People who don't like to read.
18. People with little or no regard for my time.
19. People who practice conspicuous consumption.
20. Anyone that actually believes that the New York Jets and Washington Redskins deserve to be in the NFL. The NFL would be so much better without those oxygen thieves.

July 4th

2008-07-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

Jesse Helms is dead....I'll just say that. -Papa Robbie

CNN is reporting that North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms passed away at the tender age of 86. Here’s a short list of people who died on that most American of U.S. holidays (other than Jefferson and Adams):

1. Bob Ross

You know him as: PBS instructional painter, creator of happy trees and their little friends.

Surprising facts (other than the one about him dying on the 4th): The ultra-mellow Ross picked up painting when he was in the Air Force. He was also pretty financially savvy- he turned his public broadcasting show into a multi-million dollar cash cow by selling how-to books and branded art supplies.

2. Hannibal Hamlin

You know him as: VP to Abraham Lincoln. Or maybe you don’t.

Surprising facts: Despite only lasting one term with Lincoln, and playing a quiet role in the White House, the Republican from Maine did urge the creation of the Emancipation Proclamation. He also supported arming African Americans during the Civil War.

3. Charles Kuralt

You know him as: American journalist, well known for his “On the Road” segments.
Surprising facts: He was good friends with John Steinbeck, and was heavily inspired by Travels with Charlie. Even stranger: Salon claims that he had a mistress and a second family that he hid in Montana, which would explain all that extra time on the road. Savvy readers can judge for themselves.

4. Barry White

You know him as: Singer, songwriter, general soundtrack for romantic nights/probable inspiration for your younger sibling.
Surprising facts: According to Wikipedia, the Sultan of Soul was jailed at 17 for stealing $30,000 Cadillac tires. Even stranger, he apparently had a life-changing moment in prison when he heard Elvis crooning “It’s Now or Never,” and decided to go straight. He was also supposedly offered the role of Chef on South Park, but turned it down because of the crass humor.

Goodbye George

2008-06-23T05:42:00.000-07:00

RIP to the thinking man's comedian. In my opinion, the most cerebral comedian in modern times.

By
Globe Staff / June 23, 2008

George Carlin, a comedian famed equally for his bawdy routines about drugs and obscenities and for his ability to render absurd the most commonplace of items in modern life, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital yesterday, a spokesman said. He was 71.

Mr. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica in the evening after being admitted in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters.

Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine about seven dirty words you could not say on television. A regulatory battle over a broadcast of his "Filthy Words" routine reached the US Supreme Court.

In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top US court ruled that the words cited in Mr. Carlin's routine were indecent and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

He was irascible, profane, blasphemous, and determinedly astute. Whether deciphering the American political scene, or dissecting Americans' foibles, or disassembling the English language, he had the ability to re-create the perceptions of a listener, to hilarious effect.

A favorite on college campuses for the past 40 years, he maintained a busy touring schedule, last visiting Boston at the Wang Theatre in March. Before that concert, he told The Boston Globe he started his career with the desire to go beyond telling jokes, to becoming a part jester, part philosopher.

"If [a comedian] does both of those things with dazzling and marvelous language, then he . . . becomes a bit of a poet," he said. "So without trying to sound too grand about myself, I think there's a touch of those other two things going on in this common, ordinary stand-up comic, which is what I am really."

Last year, Mr. Carlin was voted the second-best comedian of all time behind Richard Pryor in a Comedy Central poll of network executive and industry veterans.

In all, he made 22 albums and wrote three books.

Just Say No???

2008-06-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Addiction is an ugly thing...

Report: Amy Winehouse has emphysema

1 hour ago

LONDON (AP) — Soul diva Amy Winehouse has damaged her lungs by smoking crack cocaine and cigarettes, her father said in an interview published Sunday.

The Sunday Mirror quoted Mitch Winehouse as saying that Amy has early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat, and has been warned that she will have to wear an oxygen mask unless she stops smoking drugs.

"The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her," Mitch Winehouse was quoted as saying. "There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She has 70 percent lung capacity."

Winehouse, 24, collapsed at her north London home Monday after signing autographs for a group of fans and was taken to a London hospital for tests. She remained there all week.

She is still scheduled to sing at a concert in London on Friday celebrating the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela, the South African Nobel Prize-winner, and plans to take part in the Glastonbury music festival the following day.

Mitch Winehouse said it would be good for his daughter to perform.

"When she's been inactive work-wise then that's when the problems really start. The doctors have said that medically there isn't any reason why she can't do Glastonbury," the paper quoted him as saying.

He also pleaded with her drug-taking friends to stay away from her.

"What hope does she have if people are taking drugs around her," he said.

Chris Goodman, spokesman for Amy Winehouse, said "If that's what Mitch says, that's what he says. It sounds right."

Mitch Winehouse could not immediately be reached for comment.

HULK....SMASH!!!!

2008-06-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

Robbie see Hulk movie...Robbie like....movie good....HULK SMASH!!!

R. Kelly Found Not Guilty....

2008-06-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

WOW.

Fans' questions answered

2008-06-10T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've decided to answer some of the questions that I get repeatedly before/during/after my shows. I'm just going to lay them out in no particular order. When people ask me somethin', I'll send them to this blog.

1. No, I'm not from Jamaica, not every reggae artist is Jamaican.
2. No, I don't smoke marijuana...not every reggae artist smokes marijuana.
3. Yes, congratulations on discovering Bob Marley's Legend CD...No, I'm not covering
any of his songs.
4. Yes, I write my own lyrics and I'm not gonna do "that Sean Paul song".
5. Bob Marley didn't "invent" reggae.
6. I don't wear locks because I'm not a rasta. No, most reggae artists aren't rastas.
7. Yes, hip-hop evolved from reggae.
8. Yes, Shaggy is really Jamaican (spend some time in Brooklyn or Miami).
9. Your time an a cruise ship or at a resort in the caribbean doesn't make you an
expert on "caribbean culture"
10. Yes, Gullah is a language.
11. You must ask my bass player before you touch his locks.
12. Yes, you can dance with me...just keep it clean.

Amy....Come ON!!!

2008-06-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

People are actually taking bets on how long it will be before she ODs...sad. So much talent...so little self-control.

It's Shameful

2008-06-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone that knows me knows how much I love Bo Diddley's music. He died a few days ago and the coverage has been almost non-existent. The man was a pioneer who never got his due and the media barely acknowledged his influence on popular music. This is a major pet-peeve of mine. There are so many pioneers that get very little recognition while the copy-cats get the shine. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino are still with us...but I feel like these American IDLE loving people will never have a clue....

Bo Diddley's funeral rocked and rolled Saturday with as much energy as his music.

For four hours, friends and relatives sang, danced and celebrated the life of the man who helped give birth to rock and roll with a signature beat that influenced Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and many others.

As family members passed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's casket, a gospel band played his namesake song. Within moments, the crowd of several hundred began clapping in time and shouting, "Hey, Bo Diddley!"

Diddley, 79, died of heart failure Monday at his home in nearby Archer.

"In 1955 he used to keep the crowds rocking and rolling way before Elvis Presley," Diddley's grandson, Garry Mitchell, said before kicking his legs sideways, high up in the air, the way Diddley did onstage. Mourners cheered.

"I'm just telling it the way it is," Mitchell said.

Diddley, who was born Ellas Bates and became Ellas McDaniel when he took the last name of a cousin who raised him, was remembered for much more than his songs. Friends recounted his generosity, manifested in concerts for the homeless and work with youth groups and other charities; and the way he loved to talk to just about anybody he met.

Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan referred to one of his most famous hits as she told the crowd, "When the question is asked, 'Who do you love?', it's you, Bo."

The funeral was followed by a tribute concert featuring his touring band and other musicians.

Eric Burdon, leader of the rock group The Animals, attended the service, and flowers were sent from musicians including Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Petty, George Thorogood and others.

Burdon, also a member of the Rock Hall, called Diddley a big influence.

"I've been a fan of his since 16, 17 years of age. Probably one of the first records I ever owned," Burdon said, recalling that his attention was immediately grabbed when he saw an album cover with Diddley sitting on a scooter with a square guitar.

Burdon said he saw Diddley play last year at a concert in Australia, and even though he could tell his health wasn't great, Diddley put tremendous energy into the show. He was known for his stage moves, which some presume influenced Presley.

"He's always been jumping around and very aggressive; if he was onstage with the Stones, he was obviously putting Keith Richards in his place," Burdon said. In describing the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm Diddley made famous, Burdon said, "I call it bone music, because it goes to your bone."

But stories of another side of Diddley were told repeatedly at the funeral. A man who loved God and his family, who would always stop to talk in the grocery store and was always smiling.

His brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes of Biloxi, Miss., said Diddley always asked how he could help and what he could give.

"There was one thing he wouldn't give me. That's his hat," Haynes said, referring to the black hat the musician was also known for.

But Haynes said his brother grew weary of life on the road.

"'But this is what God gave me to feed my family,'" Haynes recalled Diddley saying. "'I have to keep doing it until God says it's enough.'"

Diddley was born in McComb, Miss. He moved to rural Archer in the early 1980s and had a recording studio on his 76 acres. Mitchell joked that Diddley got up so early, he would tap the roosters on the shoulder to wake them up. And he always sang at breakfast.

Diddley's friend Roosevelt Hutchinson described how the musician would wrap meat in several layers of tin foil, bury it and light a fire on top to cook it. Once the fire was lit, he would grab his guitar.

"He just enjoyed playing that thing under those trees," Hutchinson said.

But he enjoyed his family even more, friends said. He had four children, 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

"Please know this, because I know Diddley," the guitarist's business manager, Faith Fusillo, told his family. "As much as you loved him, he loved you more."

A Picture Says A Million Words.....

2008-06-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

It's ON!!!

2008-06-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

When Disadvantages Collide

2008-06-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, June 2, 2008; A02

One hundred forty-three years ago, women's suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton faced a conundrum: With the Civil War over, Stanton had to decide whether to support the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which enabled black men to vote -- at a time when white women such as herself still did not have that right.

Stanton decided to oppose the amendments: "As the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see Sambo walk into the kingdom first."

The question of what to do when the interests of two groups that had long suffered discrimination clashed with each other split the feminist movement. In order to gain passage of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 gave women the right to vote, leading feminists jettisoned issues important to African Americans to win support from women and politicians who would have nothing to do with people of color. Without the support of the racists, the amendment might have failed, said Kimberle Crenshaw, professor of constitutional and civil rights law at Columbia University and UCLA.

There were two ironies in this: Stanton, like many other suffragists, was a passionate abolitionist. And in the years before she made her derogatory remark about "Sambo," abolitionists had treated women in exactly the same manner -- excluding them from equal participation in the movement merely because they were female.

The political alliance that the suffragists built helped pass the 19th Amendment, but it drove a wedge into the women's movement. Over the long term, just as relegating women to second-class citizens weakened the campaign for civil rights, abandoning solidarity with people of color weakened the women's movement.

"At the end of the day, what is winning and what is losing?" asked Crenshaw. "Yes, the 19th Amendment happened, but feminism lost its soul in the process."

The resonance of that long-ago predicament is still with us today, as a bitter Democratic presidential primary battle has caused many supporters of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to feel that the campaign has pitted race against gender. Many Clinton supporters, men included, cite openly sexist criticism targeting their candidate -- conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asked, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" -- and feel that a political defeat would be an unconscionable victory for sexism itself.

Obama's supporters, the majority of whom are white, cite the racism their candidate has faced -- large numbers of voters have openly told pollsters they would never vote for a black man. Should Democratic superdelegates hand the race to Clinton, many of these voters would feel racism has won.

As with century-old debates between suffragettes and abolitionists, the debate has veered toward which disadvantaged group has suffered more. And resentment has grown between them.

Clinton supporter and Bethesda psychologist Lynette Long, for example, described herself as a liberal white woman who has always reached out to help disadvantaged black men. But she now sees these potential Obama supporters as an "impediment" to her own dreams. She wrote, "In this election cycle, they symbolize an impediment to something I want more than anything in the world, a chance to see one of my own win the highest office in the land."

Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins, a University of Maryland sociologist who is to be the next president of the American Sociological Association, said the error being made by many Clinton and Obama supporters is to see race and gender in unidimensional terms: "Obama represents race and Clinton represents gender -- this is a flawed model," Collins said. "Why does Obama not represent gender? He has a race and a gender. Hillary has a race and a gender."

The reason for our selective focus, the scholars said, is that people are keenly aware of unfair disadvantages but spend no time dwelling on unfair advantages.

Supporters of Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, for example, do not forcefully disavow the support of voters who say they will never vote for a black man. Obama does not systematically try to kick out misogynists -- and turn away voters who say they will not vote for someone as old as McCain.

Our focus on unfair disadvantages rather than unfair advantages may be understandable, but it causes us make our own group's disadvantages the problem -- when the problem is actually unfairness itself.

Right from the time of the suffragettes, the simplest way to see the problem with thinking about race, gender, age and social class in unidimensional terms is to consider what happens to people at the intersection of competing disadvantages: In the case of race and gender, women of color have invariably found themselves in a bind.

In 1851, Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech was a call to think about the effects of racism and sexism at the same time. In 1913, black suffragette Ida B. Wells-Barnett had to crash a march in Washington aimed at winning women the right to vote -- she had been asked to stay out or stay in the back after organizers decided to allow the march to be segregated.

In the Democratic nomination battle, black women have found themselves in a less tragic but similar bind. Whether you are talking about Obama supporters such as Oprah Winfrey, or Clinton supporters such as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), Crenshaw said, black women are accused of treachery: Clinton supporters are accused of being race traitors and Obama supporters are accused of being traitors to their sex.

The real question, with the suffragettes or with those in the current political race, comes down to whether groups that face discrimination focus their disappointment and resentment at discrimination -- or at each other.

"Who do you blame, who are you angry at?" Crenshaw asked. "When you have a feminist who says, 'I will be damned if Sambo gets in before me,' she is mad at him."

R.I.P. Bo Diddley

2008-06-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up listening to this man....You don't know happiness until you've heard "Bo's Bounce" and "Mumblin Guitar"

JACKSONVILLE - Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook."
"If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you honey," he quipped.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars.

Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th Century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John," "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away."

The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the United States with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," E. Michael Harrington, professor of music theory and composition at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., said in 2006.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen, George Michaels and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations. "I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after."

"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I'm writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain't quit yet."

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

"I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun." In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Bo Diddley turned to the camera and said, "He don't know Diddley."

"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley said. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."

Born as Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at age 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners.

By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.

Fidel On Obama....

2008-06-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL

THE EMPIRE'S HYPOCRITICAL POLITICS

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f250508i.html

It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan.
I listened to his speech, as I did McCain's and Bush's. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly.

What were Obama's statements?

"Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy.
(…) This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century - of elections that are anything but free or fair (…) I won't stand for this injustice, you won't stand for this injustice, and together we will
stand up for freedom in Cuba," he told annexationists, adding: "It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime. (…) I will maintain the embargo.
"

The content of these declarations by this strong candidate to the U.S. presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason for this reflection.

José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation directives who Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the owner of the 50-calibre automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and infrared sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other deadly weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an international meeting held in Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta.

Pepe Hernández' group wanted to renegotiate a former pact with Clinton, betrayed by Mas Canosa's clan, who secured Bush's electoral victory in 2000 through fraud, because the latter had promised to assassinate Castro, something they all happily embraced. These are the kinds of political tricks inherent to the United States' decadent and contradictory system.

Presidential candidate Obama's speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable hand-outs and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it.

How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food crisis? The world's grains must be distributed among human beings, pets and fish, which become smaller every year and more scarce in the seas that have been over-exploited by the large trawlers which no international organization could get in the way of. Producing meat from gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates technology's potential in the fight against climate change, though he is more conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than Bush. He could seek the advice of Gore, who is also a democrat and is no longer a candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at which global warming is advancing. His close political rival Bill Clinton, who is not running for the presidency, an expert on extra-territorial laws like the Helms-Burton and Torricelli Acts, can advice him on an issue like the blockade, which he promised to lift and never did.

What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is doubtless, from the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency? "For two hundred years," he said, "the United States has made it clear that we won't stand for foreign intervention in our hemisphere. But every day, all across the Americas, there is a different kind of struggle --not against foreign armies, but against the deadly threat of hunger and thirst, disease and despair. That is not a future that we have to accept --not for the child in Port au Prince or the family in the highlands of Peru. We can do better. We must do better. (…) We cannot ignore suffering to our south, nor stand for the globalization of the empty stomach." A magnificent description of imperialist globalization: the globalization of empty stomachs! We ought to thank him for it. But, 200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin American unity and, more than 100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the struggle against the annexation of Cuba by the United States.
What is the difference between what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims and resuscitates in his speech two centuries later?

"I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House who will work with my full support. But we'll also expand the Foreign Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the Americas.
We'll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans to go abroad to deepen the trust and the ties among our people," he said near the end, adding: "Together, we can choose the future over the past." A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at least the fear, that history makes figures what they are and not all the way around.

Today, the United States have nothing of the spirit behind the Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic empire undreamed of by the country's founders at the time. Nothing, however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former were exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be auctioned at the marketplace men, women and childrenfor nearly a century, despite the fact that "all men are born free and equal", as the Declaration of Independence affirms. The world's objective conditions favored the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations have used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don't want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful values.

An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism visited upon Cuba.

The revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its own workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an eight-hour work shift, which stemmed from the development of productive forces.

The first thing the leaders of the Cuban revolution learned from Martí was to believe in and act on behalf of an organization founded for the purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound by previous forms of power and, following the institutionalization of this organization, we were elected by more than 90 percent of voters, as has become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least resemble the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a time, as in the case of the United States, stay short of 50 percent of the voters. No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbor has. To state otherwise is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama's great intelligence, his debate skills or his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in the electoral race. I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who accompany him and give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a touching human spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise them for the record.

Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings?

Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?

Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country, Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it costs innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why is this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and other peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn't the same Act applied to Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific?

Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables, fruits, almonds and other delicacies for U.S.
citizens? Who would sweep their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and lowest-paid jobs?

Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect children born in the United States?

Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?

You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet.
I ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights?

Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark corners of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be?

Is it honorable and sound to invest millions and millions of dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on earth several times over?

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its education, health, sports, culture and sciences programs, implemented not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was able to achieve what we have.

The only form of cooperation the United States can offer other nations consist in the sending of military professionals to those countries. It cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to a country in need (though Cuba has known and relied on the cooperation of excellent U.S. doctors). They are not to blame for this, for society does not inculcate such values in them on a massive scale.

We have never subordinated cooperation with other countries to ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our internationalist medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry Reeve, a young man, born in the United States, who fought and died for Cuba's sovereignty in our first war of independence.

Our revolution can mobilize tens of thousands of doctors and health technicians. It can mobilize an equally vast number of teachers and citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to fulfill any noble purpose, not to usurp people's rights or take possession of raw materials.

The good will and determination of people constitute limitless resources that cannot be kept and would not fit in a bank's vault. They cannot spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 25, 2008
10:35 p.m.

WHY I LIKE HEELS

2008-05-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

No. This isn't some foot fetish thing. This is about pro wrestling and life. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love watching pro wrestling. When I was a kid, I used to cheer for the good guys (babyfaces) and boo the bad guys (heels). As I went through my teen years, I started to have an appreciation for the "heel". In reality, the heel is who the people came to see because they always wanted to see the "face" get revenge for some awful deed that the "heel" committed. The "heel" cheated and bragged that it wasn't cheating, but an "opportunity". The "heel" had swagger and I felt that I had more in common with him. I knew that it was scripted, so I thought about it in a very different way. I knew that most of the "heels" were actually very nice guys who played a role. The "heel" kept things interesting. If they did their job well, they could make people want to jump over the barriers to smack them. People who fall for the "heel's" button pushing are called "marks". Marks are the stereotypical fans who really think that these guys hate each other and don't get that it's scripted. The Heel is what I become when I interact with some people online (completely tongue-in-cheek) and the marks want to jump over the barrier because they've missed the point. The heel is there for a reason, his methods maybe controversial but he usually wins and at some point in his career becomes a "face". Faces have heel turns too...just like real people. We all have that going on inside of us. There is a reason that we love Darth Vader (he's much more complex that just being a "bad guy"). Heels are simply much deeper than "babyfaces". I like playing the heel in some forums online but I'm a total "face" onstage. It's the duality of human nature! Stop being a mark! Take it for what it is....intellectual smackdowns for edutainment purposes. And if you don't get it, you never will.

Iron Man

2008-05-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Finally, Hollywood has done it right. This is the best film version of a superhero that I've seen in quite a while. Robert Downey Jr is the PERFECT Tony Stark (Stark's character has plenty of demons...Downey didn't have to reach far). If you like seeing stuff get blown to pieces, go see this movie!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

2008-05-01T16:57:00.000-07:00