What Jimi Can't See

Jimi Izrael wrote a scathing critique of hiphop, he just doesn't realize it. Although he says that "Hip Hop music is the voice of America's poor blacks and Latinos.", when it comes to whitefolks he says:

First, there is the presumption that putting rappers at the podium will turn millions of black kids into a political force. But most of the millions of people who buy hip-hop music these days are white, and they have little or no comprehension of the deeper meaning of hip-hop culture or the social forces that begat it. They know only about rap music, break-dancing and baggy clothes. Young white kids can't truly relate to being black, but many can relate to being alienated. They grasp that message, along with the cartoonish violence, slanguistics and fantastical opulence of hip-hop life. They can't be rallied to adopt hip-hop's social agenda because they only listen to hip-hop, while we live it every day.

What Izrael says about white suburbans actually applies to every hiphopper, what he says about the first person plural only applies to hiphop's literati and others so inclined.

There is no deeper meaning of hiphop culture. It is what it is, and anybody anywhere can walk into any level of hiphop consciousness. It's exactly the same for opera, bhangra, dance hall, oi, gregorian chant and any other kind of music on the planet. Hiphop's social agenda is about as thin as as the pants on Lil Kim's ass. There is absolutely nothing hiphop has discovered through its 'politics' that adds any dimension of understanding to what black and latino politics have been. Hiphop consciousness is not political, it's simply about understanding and appreciating the music, which (duh!) over the past 20 years lots of people around the world have done. White kids understand everything about hiphop there is to understand which is rap music, break dancing and baggy clothes. If black and Latino kids are more invested in this 'deep meaning' of hiphop, more's the pity for them. But there is nothing about being black or latino with regard to hiphop that make them any different from their white brothers and sisters who consume the same products.

There is a real and significant difference between appreciating hiphop and actually performing hiphop dances, designing hiphop clothes or performing on a mic. But hiphop is merely a style, a flavor. Being down with the flava doesn't make you a dancer or a designer, and it sure as hell doesn't make you effective in politics. People who study dance, clothing design and politics have more to teach hiphop than hiphop has to teach them, and until we see the Hiphop Institute at Harvard, it will always be that way. As far as I know there is a turntablist instructor at Berklee, but the rest is all street apprenticeship. Street wisdom is good around the way. Didn't somebody rap about dying for a rock and dying for a block?

Hiphop's industrial base is disposable income. It's a bourgie institution which feeds on itself. It's politics, were they expressed, would bear the same contradictions and conflicts as that of the larger society. Hiphop, which is incapable of forming coalitions of any sort (not since Self-Destruction) would be hard pressed to get any coherent policy developed. But Russell Simmons does not make a think tank any more than Bono, and anyone with any hope for a new politics in the US needs to think long and hard about how Rock and Hollywood have developed their politics. Scary huh?

I know enough about hiphop to know that Aaliyah, Left Eye & De La Soul all took a great deal of pride in the fact that they could take their money and go hide away in other countries. That's where they found their peace away from the dimegrabbers, bootyshakers and sucka MCs who were just shorty versions of themselves. Hiphop's hierarchy despises its own roots because it exposes clearly how much it's just the ego trip of spoiled young Americans masturbating in the mirror or pointing a nine at it's own head.

Hiphop is a revolution of expression, but it only rarely expresses anything of enduring value. To desire hiphop politics is simply a desire to transcend the shallowness of the hiphop world. I think many hiphoppers will do just that, but I think they'll be loathe to call their mature politics 'hiphop politics'. Hiphop, just like Rock is all about youth. We hope that they'll grow out of it.

Good Boy

Noted without comment.

"I had my fun in 2000 and I made a lot of people angry," Williams said. "It's not fun when you're making people angry at the same time. I learned how to do it right."

OK one comment. You will note how they put "gentlemen" in quotes. Blow me.

Net Sports

Last night I watched my first Olympics broadcast of the Athens Games. I can't tell you how much it makes me yearn for Australian broadcasts. The Outdoor Life Network got it right when they broadcast the Tour de France. Stick to the action, don't put commentators on camera, switch cameras to different parts of the race, let color give historical context, not personal drama stories. NBC is so schmaltzy it's disgusting. I do not, repeat, do not want to have the camera zoomed in on an empty pair of wrestling shoes.

Since my family was at the previous two games, Athens is a letdown in every dimension. I haven't even paid much attention. So it was something of a pleasure to hear the Olympic theme and actually perk up. There was only one good aspect of the coverage last night, and that was Men's Volleyball. (As soon as I saw Marion Jones' baby drooling, I shut the tube off and cranked up the XBox.)

The sport has truly advanced since I last watched. What really shows up is how much more they use the spaces outside of which a normal volleyball game might be played. If there is one metric one could use besides the obvious speed involved, it's how far back players are to serve. The same goes for table tennis. Something that's also interesting is to see how players get wide of the playing fields up close to the net.

It took me a while to get used to the rally scoring, but it kept the action nice. Interestingly, recieving a serve was a better scoring position. But Lloy Ball proved that there's still a place for service aces. Sweet. I'll follow these guys on the court. That was pure drama.

Earth, Wind & Gangsta

The first record I ever bought was 'Getaway' by Earth Wind and Fire. It was a 45 that I bought from Crenshaw Records. I played it over and over on my record player until I memorized the lyrics.

This morning, like every morning, I woke up with a song on my mind. Unlike most mornings, I was unable to immediately crank up the iTunes and find it. And so I started this day shocked to my foundations that I don't have "Let's Groove" somewhere on my hard drive. In fact, I didn' have Arrested Development nor did I have any Red Hot Chili Peppers or Bill Withers. Something is out of joint here. So I am on a mission to correct these deficits as we speak.

Since I can play and rip at the same time, I found myself going back down memory lane to a particular lyric. noting as I do, and have been for a dozen years how lame contemporary music is when it comes to inspired love songs. Be that as it may, the lyric was:

Shining star for you to see
What your life could truly be.

Of course you know that. But did you know that there was once a street gang in LA called the Westside Family? They were originally Family but then got incorporated into the Crips. I know, because I knew a dumbass kid named Dana Andrews, who had the hottest sisters on the planet back in 1973. Dana had a faggy name and he was too lightskinned (with freckles) to get respect. Add to that the fact that he was a Catholic school boy and not very good at football or basketball and you had a formula. Dana did have balls, however and wasn't afraid to fight or shoplift. Typical knucklehead ghetto 7th grader stuff. So I was there at the beginning when Dana and other kids who lived somewhere in the nice looking public housing on Adams just west of Western decided to make something out of the green bomber jackets that they stole from Sears Pico.

He decided to call them the Gangsta Crips and wanted me to join because I had gone to public school, which added to the rep. Since I had gone to public school and knew how to fuckin' cuss, among other Huckleberry skills, I was very quickly becoming one of the most often swatted kids at Holy Name of Jesus School. Nevertheless, I wasn't interested in getting a big dog and making it bite public school kids who were relentlessly picking on us Catholic school kids. I didn't particularly like Dana although I had a huge crush on his sister Danielle and I wasn't about to steal a green bomber jacket, even though it looked hella cool. Besides, where I lived on Wellington & Jefferson, no bangers trolled. Our blocks already had the cohesion and we were deeply into street sports. Aside from all that, the very notion of following Dana Andrews was a joke.

Gangstas would go on to clash with Family. And it was this rivalry which brought to mind the constant bastardization of popular songs mouthed off by teenaged boys who thought they were being tough and clever.

Shining star for you to see
This is strictly Family

Service

Breakfast at Denny's

Michael Savage is on vacation today. So his guest host talked about race on the air. I didn't catch the beginning but the man was making some good points. Still, as usual, I turned off the radio and continued the conversation with my steering wheel at a higher level of discourse.

I told my own reparations story as an example of the kind of thing nobody hears in the shallow discussions that ever make the air. It starts here at my last grandmother's funeral. Those 200 acres would make a big difference, and I think every black family has got such a story.

It occured to me that the last people Americans want to hear stories about racism from are those of us who are well-educated, well-paid and articulate. The irony is that we are the ones most likely to have legitimate complaints of racism. I'm not saying that the poor and uneducated blacks don't face racism, but rather that their lot are more likely to be beat down by more factors. When someone with a master's degree is told they are not qualified, it's more likely to be a racist lie then when sombody from the ghetto is told that. Racism may be more consequential for the little guy, but it's more obvioius and blatant for the big guy.

That's all.

Poltical Burnout

This is exactly how I feel today, after being involved in a pissing match over Kerry:

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologues,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what”—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” but Converse thought that they basically don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of “constraint”: they can’t see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse’s interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible “issue content” whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.

It's probably more fair to say this is what the little man on my shoulder is telling me all the time. To listen or not to listen, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to put up with the Coulters and Moores that American political life is heir to, or to take up arms by way of a think tank or 527...

Fay vs Schlesinger

Last time I checked, there were about 7 different investigations into the Abu Ghraib scandal. I'm not sure whether or not that's a good thing, but it will certainly have the effect of burying the significance of the findings. 20 years from now it will be interesting for people fresh to the deal try to figure out which one the American people cared about.

As for me, I somewhat care. I have just a few new thoughts on the subject. It appears that Schlesinger is going to try to lay blame as much as possible up the chain of command. This makes no sense to me. How can it be that an entire bureacracy is responsible for injuries to a dozen people? Instead of the effect of highlighting the probelm, it simply spreads the blame all over the place. When 500 people are responsible for $100 dollars of damage, it doesn't matter much to each. If your aim is to target Rumsfeld, as many people's aim is, you end up taking the whole bureacracy route. Dilutes a misguided effort. Dumb.

It's interesting to hear something that actually merits the adjective 'horrendous', and I say so only because I have yet to see this in a Quinton Tarrantino filme, which is the Dog Game. The rest of the abuses, I simply don't find so far outside of the imagination of vulgar Americans.

Which brings us to an interesting inversion, which is that our liberal and permissive society would be better represented to the world through a disciplined military code of conduct, than by the goodness of ordinary American people themselves.

Pardon My French

I like the French. While I don't particularly admire them, I would say without hesitation that they are an admirable bunch. I don't disdain them as is the current American fashion. On the whole I am positive. There are several reasons for this.

The French Have Balls
There's no other way to put it. The French are combattive, arrogant and stubborn as hell. They stand up to us, or anyone as if they really don't care what we think. They do, but they make a good show of not being the slightest bit purturbed.

French Is A Cool Language
There is something about the way French is spoken when done well that is remarkable. I studied French for three years in highschool and was pretty damned ready for honors in my fourth, except that there were not enough francophiles in my school to justify offering the class. So I had learned enough to start reading books. But the way French sentences and paragraphs are constructed allows for incredibly persuasive arguments. Call me weird but I really dug the French subjunctive.

The French Have Style
The last time I was in Paris, which was some time ago, I hung out with my cousin at a fashion show. It was a hiphop fashion show, in fact, and the models looked like they were straight out of a Janet Jackson video. It took me a while, having stared my eyeballs into straining, that these African women were not English speakers. Imagine a room full of girls that look like Sanaa Lathan

In addition to those things, the French Understand Sex and the French Are Free. They can and will lecture you on those matters. I think America will come back around to giving the French their due props. Wait and see...

While I'm at it, it being national stereotypes as informed by my limited personal experience, let me add the following.

Germans talk too much about the littlest things. I don't know how they do it, but they can get into discussions and not leave until they have completely exhausted the subject and taken score about who knows the most. Every time I speak to one of them, I get the feeling that they are counting the syllables in the words I am using. They're fricking relentless on this. On the other hand, they do understand loud music, fast cars and women in fishnet stockings.

Murkowski in Alaska

Lisa Murkowski is running against three conservative Republicans for the Alaska senatorial seat. I'm watching this race. What this article doesn't say is that the other three candidates are also trying to make abortion a big issue in the campaign.

Mainstream Republican leaders have embraced her. She's gotten the blessing of Alaska's senior senator, Ted Stevens, who called her "a hell of a lot better senator than her dad ever was."

She's been endorsed by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who made a campaign appearance in Anchorage. There has been a pipeline of Cabinet secretaries choosing Alaska to announce federal programs.

She supports tax cuts championed by President Bush and emphasizes her close relationship with Stevens and Rep. Don Young.

Money has poured in to her campaign since she began campaigning in January 2003 and she had raised $3.75 million through Aug. 4.

Her three Republicans challengers do not believe she's the best person for the job: Former state Senate President Mike Miller, 53, a gift shop owner from North Pole who spent 18 years in the Legislature; Wev Shea, 60, the former U.S. attorney for Alaska, now in private practice, and perennial candidate Jim Dore, an Anchorage house framer.

Miller has not been subtle in reminding voters of the circumstances of Sen. Murkowski's appointment. A mailer last week showed a frog with a gold crown under the headline "Kiss monarchy goodbye."

Miller's campaign also has been tagging Murkowski with a label considered leprous by Alaska Republicans: liberal.

Whitman Speaks For Me

The NYT has an article that shows about where my head is at.

Those who once might have been called Rockefeller Republicans say the prime-time slots set aside to present a centrist image show that the leadership knows the party must broaden its appeal to retain the White House. But they worry about their real influence in a party dominated by conservatives at a time when the ranks of House moderates are thinning and an activist group zeros in on candidates it brands RINO's, Republican in Name Only.

"Frankly, if the president wins walking away with this, maybe the country is in a different place than where the moderate Republicans are,'' said Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Bush administration official who is writing a book titled "It's My Party Too." "If he loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people.''

Mrs. Whitman makes it clear that she does not want President Bush, whom she served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to lose. But she is not alone in urging party leaders to consider the contributions of moderates at moments other than when it makes strategic sense

Leak

Gateway + MicroCenter

Gateway is finally showing evidence of brains. They are going to sell their machines in a new deal with MicroCenter. MicroCenter is by far the best retailer of software and software related books in the country. They are most definitely a destination. Gateway has been making mediocre consumer PCs for a long time and completely missed the mark with their cow-flavored retail chain.

I don't know how it can happen, but I am hopeful that this can result in more MicroCenter stores. I may still end up going to Fry's for the prices, but I do miss MicroCenter - which is a much smarter store with far better people. Come to LA, please.

Tertiary Meta

Amity

Malkin v Matthews

I have never had a reason to like Michelle Malkin, only a reason to dislike her, namely for her suggestion that MEChA members have their motives interrogated by major media. It's ironic that her snarky call for Katie Couric to play 'hardball' with the Mechistas is exactly the pickle she found herself in last week.

We have just been debating the necessity of dropping the loudmouths from conversations vis a vis 'intellectual non-violence'. I think that the ultimate result of that kind of discipline will result in a higher general quality of debate, with fewer debaters. It's clear that the blogosphere will roll on in any case, and I am hopeful that lessons like these are not fogotten.

For the record I have disliked Chris Matthews from day one. He has always been a fast-talking hounddog with no tact nor respect for nuance. What Keith Olbermann is doing reporting politics is anybody's guess.

Weird Science

At the UCLA Open House when I was about 12, I stood for a long time contemplating whether or not I should stick my finger into a flask of liquid nitrogen, and then pass it through the HeNe laser that had just burned a hole in a block of steel. Even though I considered myself a coward for not trying I'm pretty sure that I did the right thing.

They say really smart people never make the same mistake three times. That's because if they goof once, they're sure that it's somebody else's fault. Here you'll find the geek version of the Darwin Awards.

Greene Still Great

Moe Greene got bronze in the 100 meters last week. Scott Ostler has taken a moment to talk smack.

Justin Gatlin ran faster than the speed of Maurice Greene's sound.

Greene was clocked talking a mile-a-minute after the 100-meter dash Sunday night, but Gatlin stopped the real clocks in 9.85 seconds.

Greene claims he's still the Greatest Of All Time. Gatlin didn't have to say it, but he's the World's Fastest Human. Which title would you rather have? One title is made up and debatable and drawn in tattoo ink on Greene's shoulder. The other title is now etched in gold and in the Olympic record books.

But I think the guys at MSNBC have the proper perspective:

Greene has run 3 of the 4 fastest times ever in the 100 meters. But he does not hold the current world record. That was set in 2002 by another American sprinter, Tim Montgomery, who is currently under investigation by the U.S. anti-doping agency.

Montgomery's time was 9.78, Greene's previous world record was 9.79. Montgomery was running 10.12 or so and failed to qualify for the team. Furthermore Greene has overcome two injuries, including a broken leg, and has had to completely rethink his start. Amazing.

We haven't heard the last of Mo Greene.

The World's Ugliest Website

I'm doing research and looking at new companies to target for my business, and I came across one hideous website that I just had to share with you all.

Frontier Logistics

Yike.

NAACP: Co-Opted by the Majority

I'm going to cross a line here for the sake of provocation. It's strange because I'm not sure we're big enough to attract the kind of attention of somebody in the know, but I don't want to be dismissed, I just want some high level informed answers. Here goes:

I'm not sure that the NAACP doesn't fall into the bucket of special interest group. What do they do besides interpret reality into the argot of racial offense to a group of constituents whose sole political concern is racial offense? I think if you 'left race out of it' for a moment with the NAACP, you'd have a transparently socialist organization. Why would anybody on our side want to meet? And hash out what?

If I say that the NAACP has outlived its usefulness, I say it because it has been a success. Over the course of its lifetime, it has fulfilled its destiny in raising the racial consciousness of America to something that is fair. Not equal mind you, but fair. It is now incapable of doing incrementally more because there are no new ideas. It fights increasingly narrower battles at an increasingly pitched volume for diminishing returns, and now to maintain its own image it must overreach.

Therefore it must be relegated to the status of a watchdog organization with its eyes focused, not on the future, but upon the present. Its past doesn't matter. It doesn't need a general membership, it needs a few wealthy sponsors. It doesn't need an awards show, it needs big staff in Washington.

Am I wrong?

The Dynamics of Spawn Camping

The most happening game on XBox Live these days is the latest installment of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, known as Black Arrow.

I started playing Black Arrow last week. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it's basically the most popular combat simulator online. If you have absolutely no interest in squad-based first person shooters, this may seem tedious but it's actually rather interesting, especially if you worry about how the socialization of your sons is progressing. If you have no son, it's still a fascinating foray into game theory.

XBox Live
What goes on here? Well, it works a little something like this. Your son has his XBox hooked up to a large anonymous network of several thousands of others people's sons. He drops in a game disc, which is essentially a $50 DVD that almost nobody tries to bootleg, and all the other gamers that are online at the same time appear. Now your son has a list of 40 or 50 (up to a hundred) other gamers on his 'friends list'. Most of these friends will be people he has, and will never meet in person. They could be from Alabama, Alberta or Allemagne. He just knows them by their 'gamertag', their alias, and perhaps by their voice if they've played enough. Voice? Yes, that's what that silly Bobby Brown My Prerogative headset is for. He can hear what all the other players in his room are saying, and of course he can talk back to them.

For generations people have been shouting back at sports players on the television. Your son may be stupid, but at least he knows that the people on the other side of the screen can actually hear him.

The Room
So boy turns on the game, enters a PIN through his handheld controller and now there are several thousand other gamers playing Black Arrow with which he may cooperate or compete. He chooses which kind of game he wants to play, say 'Total Conquest' (that would be compete via cooperation), and all of the hosts who are hosting that kind of game show up on the screen after a quick search. Not their faces, just their gamertags in a list. He can then enter any hosted game of any particular host and get started gaming. He can't start playing a game until he gets into a room. No matter what time of day or night, there's always a room with plenty of English speakers.

The Host
I mentioned hosting a room. Who is a host? Anybody who wants to be a host is a host. Your son might be a host. Maybe he's even a good host. So there is a choice your son makes. Maybe he wants to host a room, maybe he wants to join somebody else's room, maybe he wants to join a room wherever his friends are. Let's say he chooses to be a host and serve up his own room. He then configures up his room depending on how he wants to play. He will allow 16 people to play, two opposing teams of 8 each. He will allow friendly fire and he will ban grenade launchers. The game will be Total Conquest.

The Clan
In addition to having a large set of friends which are visible across games other than Black Arrow. You may join an identifyable clan within the context of the Black Arrow world. These clans can arrange to compete exclusively against each other in tournaments, but most of the action has unaffiliated individuals mixed with clanners.

Ready Up
One more thing. Your son and everyone on his squad has to decide which compliment of weapons they are going to employ. They do this in the lobby before the game starts. There are assault rifles, chain guns, pistols, sniper rifles and a variety of explosives. Take your pick.

The Libertarian Task

Here is how Libertarians can earn my unending respect and admiration: work out the microeconomies and advocate for open pricing in every aspect of life. Where should they start? Health Care.

I believe it was Thoreau who said that we who have never done things such as set a broken leg, have any idea of what real life is all about. I tend to agree with that sentiment. But what I break my leg, how much does it cost to fix it? I don't know. In fact if you try to Google up an answer, you'll find more information about dogs and cats than humans. That is absolutely pathetic.

But there's a reason why you can't find out about this enormous inefficient market. It's because the powerful interests are so deeply embedded that they cannot be extricated. Republicans and Democrats are incapable of even getting started to talk about reform. If Ralph Nader wasn't such a pompous ass, he'd focus the media on this issue. If Libertarians weren't such impractical dweebs, they'd quit showing off their ideological purity and get down to this business.

Hospital A:
Broken Leg Fixed $1500

Hospital B
Broken Leg Fixed: $1700

Now for every broken leg, as for every broken automobile, there are a million reasons why and two dozen ways to fix it. And you can be sure that there are nefarious characters ready, willing and able to scheme us out of our bucks. But Libertarians ought to dedicate themselves to opening up these markets and giving transparency. They will make themselves heroes and take down a lot of Republicans and Democrats in the process.

Hop to it.

Wal-Mart & The Marginal Labor Market

Sebastian Holsclaw has a great Wal-Mart discussion in which people claim that Wal-Mart takes more than it gives with respect to employee benefits because of the size of the safety net. Is Wal-Mart subsidized and incented to pay low wages and benefits? If there was a minimum wage hike to pay for more benefits would that be a good thing?

I interpret things this way: Wal-Mart is not special with regard to its 'dependence' on the safety net, it just has the wherewithal to respond quicker. This is a quickness that is, in part, enabled by its information technology infrastructure. As the price of this techology goes down, there will be more companies enabled similarly.

In a neighborhood with small businesses who compete for the same labor pool, small incrementals in employee benefits make enough difference for Wal-Mart (aside from its reputation) to tip the scales in its favor. I wonder if those in favor of increasing the safety net would feel more confident taxing those small businesses to the same tune they would Wal-Mart.