This past April saw the 20th anniversary of the LA Rebellion (or riot depending on which political side you dangle) and the images of Rodney King remain tattooed onto the brain of a generation of citizens.
It was a sad lesson in the truths that Black people speak, as the video above had made visceral a tradition in African AMerican folk culture of the combative relations between Blacks and the police. From the song "Po Lazarus"
to hip hop group NWA (Niggas with Attitude) classic cut. Much has been said and can be said about Blacks and the criminal justice system yet there is an even more frightening lesson taught us by the trial of four of LA's Finest.
The explosive response to the verdict was not based on the injustice of the act, again, there is a long history of police abuse, wrongful incarceration and even murder of Black people. So an innocent verdict was not new, what was new was the fact this verdict had been delivered in the face of images taken in real time of the assault on Rodney King. What the verdict said to the Black American public was, "You gon believe me, or your lying' eyes." (Richard Pryor) In essence the outright denial via verdict of the guilt of the four LA patrolmen, was an assertion of a lie so gross, "Mr King was in control of the situation," so stunning "The four officers felt threatened" in its audaciousness that it bent the warp and woof of human consciousness. In a moral universe, stars burned out in response, planets fell out of orbit and matter danced an intimate belly rub with anti-matter. The dangerous lessons taught by the trial of the four LA patrolman was that 1) we do not live in a moral universe. The arc of the moral universe? never heard of it! And 2)"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." (Joseph Goebbels).
Mitt Romney is presently attempting to make use of the "Big Lie".
In the face of the growing evidence that Romney's core campaign stances, those used to convince Republican primary voters that he is severely conservative, are at odds with the views of most US citizens, Romney is now trying to systematically claim he was for all of Barack Obama's policies before he was against them. It is not new that politicians lie. It is not new that politicians running for the presidency, tack to the center in the general election. What is new is the hypersaturation of the media and the near absolute recording of every word public figures speak. So Romney's desire for credit for the saving of the US auto industry through direct governemt intervention buts up against this
Thus the Big Lie, the shocking, flaunting of the recorded and documented truth. Welcome to 1992.
When I started this blog it was my intent to post a post a week. Obviously I have not been on point with that. But I am back due to a particularly reviving performance by the above Courtnay Bryan and now I feel like I have something to share. Random, off the cuff and not too deep, not much really but bits of something.
1) I wish George R. R. Marting would finish the damn The Song of Ice and Fire series so that I can move on with my damn life! This has got me open, novels and television show. I have even read the Dunk and Egg series of novellas. If you know what that is then you are there with me.
2) I have lost the poetry in my words
no longer do blue bells of sound and phrase
trip from my tongue
the rthym is gone
naturally
but I retain gentleness in my touch
my laugh is earnest
and I no longer hide my feelings
being alive is sweet to me
and I like being it with other people
3) I know I will never be a great guitarist but I am having the greatest time trying to be
4) There can never be enough adventure in a life worth living. Once again, I am trying.
E. D. Kain asked this question (which he really didn't answer) so I had to respond
You don’t quite answer the question you ask though I think you hit some points.
1) Modern conservatism only complains, it is angry ideology that does
not assert anything positive. Angry comedians or singers or any type of
artists only goes so far. And how far the “angry” art goes depends on
the level of artistry. Like the art of the 3rd International it is most
concerned with articulating a didactic message as opposed to attaining a
level of lyricism through the commitment aesthetic excellence. There
has been angry leftist art (ex. Pablo Piucasso’s epic painting Guernica)
but what was that work angry about (slaughter, death, and the abuses of
power)? What are contemporary conservatives angry about? Women making
decisions about there health. Minorities being given opportunities to
live better lives, the privileged having to share their privilege.
2) Pop culture is that exactly popular culture, it is the voice of the
masses their expression of their views about the world. Conservatives
despite their rhetoric are most concerned with the views of those in
charge. The messages being expressed through conservative pop art does
not reach out to the masses of people because those are not the views of
the masses.
3) Corny. Conservative attempts at pop culture are corny because the
“values” conservatives seek to uphold, are no longer ubiquitous to
modern US culture. Conservatives seek to preserve or are in touch with
values of eras long past (which never really existed as they remember)
and no one wants to go back to because we would not consider youth
culture before rock and roll worth participating in. The types of
attitudes, behaviours and figures that encourage creative expression
and serve as examples of the possibilities of popular culture are
spurned by conservatives. Who do you want as your generational symbol of
creativity and expression, Pat Boone and his descendant or Little
Richard and his?
4) Independence. Conservatism despite its rhetoric is not interested in
individuality that is different from its expectations. That means
certain types of creativity (rebellious, outrageous, subversive) are not
encouraged, and what follows isn that certain types of creativity don’t
yield interesting results.
ipso facto Conservative pop culture is boring as shit.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention the arrogance and tone deafness that modern conservativism displays. Case in point to "Old School" Founding Fathers rapper at the Conservatism Political Action Convention. Check it at 1:53 where it becomes even too much for a Black Conservative to bear.
While sitting in a formerly hip bar in Brooklyn, I had a few last minute 2011 drinks with a good friend. As usual my friend and I talked about current film. I mentioned a trailer I saw for a new film coming out about the Tuskegee Airmen called Red Tails.
My friend made the comment that he would see the film despite his reservations. "What reservations?' He said, "Going to see it is like listening to India Arie, its okay but you do it because it feels like the right thing to do." "What?" My friend continued, "Look, the Tuskegee Airmen though a great moment in African American history falls into the same stories that always get told about African American people. We are long suffering, noble, proud, square jawed, yadda yadda, yadda. It seems each one of these types of noble negro movies (initiated in the post WW II liberal Hollywood ex. Home of the Brave (1949) and perfected by Sidney Poitier), becomes a justification for our presence here and now. The same types of stories keep getting told when there are a whole lot of other types of stories about our lives that just aren't getting told."
Flash forward a day later, enter a story that damn sure needs to get told. IF you are living in a culturalized zone (i.e. one where the new cultural expressions are displayed consistently) than when it gets to your town do your self a huge favor and go see the new film, Pariah.
Pariah, is the story of a gay teenage girl in New York whose is juggling her sexual identity along with her familial and social identity. First time director Dee Rees gives the viewer a jagged and real story, that avoids political grand standing and depicts a young woman trying to figure out how to be who she is in her world. Adepeo Oduye plays Alike, a a 17 year old high schooler, who knows she is woman identified but is playing a cat and mouse game with her family. Her parents played by Charles Pernell and (doing a Mo'Nique turn) long time comedienne Kim Wayans artfully depict the extremes of homophobia. The mother avoids articulating the fact that her eldest daughter is gay but announces it in her constant attempts at imposing a hetero-girly identity on her daughter. "Don't you like the new blouse I bought you? It shows off your figure." And the father, forever cherishing daddy's little girl, is in deep denial about what everyone else seems to know.
The film excels at exploring the nuanced world of a mature self awareness having to live in an immature environment. Alike knows who she is and is settled in that identity. There are no scenes of self hate, self recrimination or shame for being who she is. What we see are the beginning, exploratory and at times uncertain, steps of a a girl consciously becoming the woman she wants to be. Alike only once describes herself as gay and only to repeat it to her mother after her mother calls her a "dyke" and to finally burst her father's denial.
Not all of the characters respond to Alike's sexuality with hostility, captured is the reality of the open sexual curiousity and flexibility of Alike's peers. As another student says within purposeful earshot of Alike, "I like girls but I love boys." Alike's new "friend" Bina, played by Aasha Davis recognizes Alike's social awkwardness for what it is, discomfort with the assumed discomfort others have with her and seemingly embraces her, only to play sex with an aversion to lesbian identity ("I'm not gay. I'm just doing my thing . . . You don't have to tell anybody, okay?"). And Laura, (Pernell Walker), Alike's closest friend, a young out lesbian, estranged from her mother and working while studying for her GED, understands Alike's mix of social and sexual confidence and uncertainty, yet is estranged from her broad cultural consciousness (Alike is a poet and aesthete).
What is excellently depicted is/are the floating sets of relationships to same sex sexuality and gender bending. The overlap of class, culture and sexuality in Alike's life and the complexity of responses to these overlaps realizes a much more convoluted coming of age story. Pariahis more than a gay outsider story but one that makes real the possibilities of life for LGBT teenagers. The community and institutions that provide support for Laura are islands of escape that show worlds of affirmation. Being an LGBT teen does not make Alike and Laura essential outsiders to their communities but hetero-normativity and homophobia are at the margins of their worlds and exist as aberrant sensibilities. There are no depictions of evil lesbians in this film. What is depicted as evil and monstrous are the family members that turn their backs on daughters and those that manipulate earnest feelings. Pariah is a mesmerizing painfulful and beautiful film whose emotions are as crisp as pen and ink sketches yet whose yet whose feelings are suffuse with deep colors. It in some ways reminds me of the 1992 film Just Another Girl on the IRT, in that it is able to transform a sociological question into a living breathing person without descending into caricature, stereotype or broad and simplistic judgment. In short these movies are the type that need to be made about Black people, movies about Black people.
"If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up." (Max Von Sydow Hannah and Her Sisters)
I have to admit because my Bears are doing a death spiral I am not
paying so much attention to football but Tebow irritates the shit out of
me. I don't get the sense that Jesus had a hype man at the Sermon on
the Mount (though there may have been a few grousers) nor that he would enjoy outre displays of belief in his word.
Tebow may be a nice guy, a good sport, a fantastic conversationalist
with always the perfect mot juste but something of the very public
display of your fealty to whatever deity you worship, smacks of a smug,
"well look whose NOT going to hell" condescension to all forced to
endure it. It particularly grates in a society where over 83% of its
population define themselves as Christians. Being publicly worshipful is
not a profile in courage in 21st Century America. If this were 100AD Rome well I may give you some props. These types of displays necessarily
are arrogant self serving and pompous. The outright narcissism of it,
as if the highest consciousness in reality should give a fuck that
you beat the Vegas spread. My god, I wish Randy Newman's God from "God's
Song" would speak.
How fucking spiritually childish can a species be?
This post is in response to an interesting post over at Daily Kos in which Rush Limbaugh shows his WHOLE racist ass. I would post the video but realize I would rather not have Rush's skank ass on my blog. So below is my response to the original post.
There is room for debate
in your post. I disagree on a couple of points. 1) I don't believe
the words of a racist simpleton are indicative of the failure of
Afri-US people to protect or honor our heritage. Foolish people will be
foolish regardless of what we may do to maintain and protect our
heritage. As you have noted this type of character is a regular in the
racial tragedy of US life. Paraphrasing H. Rap Brown, "Racism is as American as cherry pie." There are many white
americans that have an existential need to perpetuate, articulate or
bloviate these ideas. Their white supremacist consciousness makes it so.
And worse, now many function in such a shameless fashion that they deem
it "bravery" to be public about their beliefs. Whether for psychological
need, social aspirations or political manipulations, racists will be
racists. In spite of these troglodytes and the various formal and
informal systems that support (-ed) them, peoples of color have managed
to survive and even excel in this country. What gives me a weird
satisfaction is that, what is driving Rush and his hordes ass backward
crazy, is that the world they long for, can not and will not exist again.
As Bob Marley said
We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be
We are what we are
That's the way it's going to be, if you don't know
My 2nd concern is with the trope of "ours [Black people's] is the
outrage". As I tell my students, race is a white person problem. I would
bet a Mitt Romney $10,000 bill, that most people of color would
probably prefer to move on from this country's racial hangups (and the
attendant racist problems). Yet it remains that sectors of the white
population continue to see the world in Black and White (see
existential need above). My question is to progressive whites, where is
your outrage? White supremacy isn't just f***ing up the
lives of people of color. The money being pumped in to the prison
industrial complex to keep young people of color in the new slavery could build a lot of schools for children of all colors and ethnicities. I have rarely
seen a mainstream white Democrat call out Tea Partiers or any of the
right wing ass hat wind bags on their racism or defend President Obama (or Michelle Obama and their daughters)
from it. This is not a call for blind partisanship, but one for simple human
dignity. I want to see more than Tim Wise
dealing critically with white supremacy and white privilege. Y'all need
to get your white people in check! It's not like Black people, with
great allies from across the spectrum, have not (and are still doing it)
fought the good fight. It's time for all sincere human minded people to
take it seriously. Rush Limbaugh and his cadres are an obvious menace
to us all. So let us all deal with it together.
Above is footage of an Afro-Colombian ceremony that was performed at the loss of an infant. The ceremony and tenor of the ceremony addresses the question, "What is it to grieve?" Whether you believe in a utopian after life for the spirit or you believe that our existence comes to an absolute end at the moment of mortality, we should celebrate when a life ends. In the former we should celebrate the peace and glory the deceased will be welcomed into and in the latter we should celebrate, however brief, the beauty and miracle of simply existing. We forget in the vastness of the physical universe, in its aeons ancient existence and overwhelmingly hostile environs that the possibility of a place that facilitates, nay encourages the growth, survival and maturation sentient life, is beyond probability. So the child, or any life, coming to be, in and of itself, is an extraordinary thing that we should smile laugh, cheer, dance and sing in celebration of. The conditions of life can be hard, dark and unforgiving, but the fact of life in the midst of that dark should always be valued.
