Cobb

Young Republicans in Las Vegas

I'm back from my sojourn in Sin City, and I am naturally struck by the contrast of the nature of the town and the fact that the primary reason I was there was to present in a panel discussion to the Young Republicans National Conference.

At the invitation of Nelson Taylor, I and 6 other panelists engaged a small but curious crowd about the perils and opportunities provided by the New Media. I had worked myself up quite a bit in anticipation of this, my first television appearance in many years. In the end, it was a brisk hour on the dais, with only perhaps about 15 minutes filmed for the ever-curious eye of C-SPAN. The program should be broadcast for American Perspectives sometime in the near future.

Sitting next to me on the panel was Bob Johnson of Right Talk and Free Republic. He was a right amicable fellow who hails from the same part of SoCal where I live. We traded quips and made small talk during our off mic time. He seems like a good guy to know and one who has been around the block. Also on the panel were others interesting, CEO Ravi Singh of ElectionMall, college speaker and ex-hippie Chris Beren, young upstart Nathan Tabor of The Conservative Voice and Bob Eberle. Eberle's GOPUSA.com has a rather massive audience, of course not big enough to satisfy anyone's ambition on the panel. In addition was the very serious Don Irvine of AIM.

The star of the show from the moment he arrived was Bob Eberle who jumped into the middle of conversations whose beginnings obviously had deep roots beyond my ken. Eberle, it turns out, is the owner of the Talon News Service whose employee was the star of one of those huge controversies the blogosphere seems to love so well - none other than Gannon-Gluckert. So it took a moment for me to put two and two together as I overheard him say something to the effect that the Left wanted to try and prove that Bush and Cheney were gay. Eberle was clearly steamed about getting the bad end of a great deal of lefty sharp sticks and I have a feeling that the bad blood left over from that unpleasantness is not going away any time soon. Such matters make me very glad for my day job, because in the end, I could hardly expect less from inside the Beltway.

Of all the panelists, I was clearly the one with the fewest partisan axes to grind. Certainly mine is the smallest of all their websites - as these gents seemed to be angling more towards media mogul end of the business. I knew that coming in and decided to play the techie role ahead of time. I actually expected a smaller panel and a larger audience so I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to go into more detail about the future I see. Nevertheless, knowing it was just an hour I figured I could get only a bit in edgewise anyway.

What I didn't get a chance to say which needed saying was anything about Creative Commons when the question of copyright was raised. I got the feeling that it was something of a softball aimed at the big publishers in the group. I believe it was Eberle, although it might have been Tabor who made a very explicit point of declaring his 100% support of current copyright law. It is perfectly right and proper that any CEO of a media company should, but it rather cut to the heart of what would have been a very interesting discussion, had we the time and opportunity to do so.

I would contend that in the bottom-up world I would like to see coming from the citizens of the United States - those of us who are the most demanding and persistent participants in democratic politics in the world - that our net output far exceeds that of the big media. And since most of us bloggers are aware of the Creative Commons, as primary sources, we can control copyright through our choices which will become ossified by convention. In other words, who cares about the 500,000 words copyrighted daily in the NYTimes when there are 1000 times that amount coming through Creative Commons in the blogosphere? Sooner or later the expensive words won't count and the cheap ones will prevail, which was a point I wanted to make by saying 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' and then mockingly adding 'TM'.

Since I for one consider myself quite strongly in what we often call the 'reality based world' and am probably a bit more scientific than the average panelist, I'm not particularly concerned about a subset of the blogosphere's willingness to undermine copyright per se. There is value in a writer who interviews a subject matter expert and then copyrights that interview as a matter of course in doing business with his publisher, but there is perhaps greater value in the subject matter expert speaking directly through the New Media. This, in my estimation, is the whole point, and I wonder if the implications of this inherent conflict is apparent to those who would cannibalize the MSM with their New Media methods. Or as Ravi Singh put it so eloquently, do you want votes or money?

As for myself, I'm analytical and an idea man. As I arrived early to the forum, I wandered around as the Young Republicans themselves were gnashing through the parliamentary moshpit of credentialling and standing of their member organizations and delegates. It took me back to my own college days and memories of interminable meetings seemingly tailor-made by lobbiests for the caffiene and amphetamine industry. While I hope the grinding continues, it would be much more efficient to do it online so as not to mess with the schedules of the queues of panelists who drive at breakneck speeds across the desert Southwest. Another point of XRepublic. And so while there are a host of points of orders and arcane etiquettes still very much in action in the halls of power in this nation, I am hopeful that the 60% who sit out most elections are of the same sentiment as I. Show me the bottom line and let me vote, and stop wasting my time with all the foofoo. I think the ideas will come through if we are courageous and bold enough to speak the truth and commit to be reality-based. An idealistic position which I quite well understands suffers in the face of the fact that the unwashed millions very often require direction and prodding from those of us who bother to lead. Nevertheless as for me and those like me, I'll have my freedom thank you.

I have come to understand and respect the opacity and purposeful indirection in law. It's confusing so as to dilute and diffuse the power of those who would just as soon bull through it. But when it comes to citizens coming to concensus, I much prefer discrete clarity. Then again, that's why I studied computer and not political science. So out in this world of citizen activists, a bit of plain speaking is a damned good thing and to hell with the shackles of copyright. Take this from the great-great grandson of someone who was forbidden to read by law. Our words will be free.

The spousal unit crossed me on this point all the way to dinner at the Luxor Steakhouse that evening. She said that if my book or my words were being used by somebody else and taking money out of the Bowen Family Trust, that I'd be running around looking for brains to splatter. She's probably right but I wouldn't let her have the moment. After all, I was paying for the steaks. Which I guess made her point after all.

All in all I had a fabulous time in Las Vegas, whose large contingent of average-looking people on the make never ceases to amuse. It was a good weekend, and I thank Nelson for the invite - big time, as well as Bob Johnson for all the pizza.

Rize: An Hermetic Gift

I have finally managed to squeeze off a few hours of free time, and so I witnessed the Rize documentary first-hand. Nicely.

For the dancer in me, I am stunned at how swiftly the articulations subdue the context. All of the 'bam' moments of which there are a good dozen in the flick - the dance floor equivalents of a basketball reject - are almost subsumed into the cuts. It's as if LaChapelle was wary of capturing moments of dance in order to leave more for the future of filming the form.

What's nicely done about 'Rize' is that in the end it feels very much like a gift of a cinematographer to his subjects. He has understood just enough and crafted just enough of a narrative and captured just enough of the life to frame the dancing itself - for the dancers. It's as if he said 'tell me the story of your dancing, and show me your dancing, and I will tell it back to you on film'. And while it doesn't feel as though we in the audience are opening somebody else's present, it does feel like a present nonetheless. In that I mean to suggest that the documentary doesn't project so much as one might expect from the opening sequences. Here's South LA, a dangerous, impoverished place, and here are some kids in it.

There's enough of a continuity in this dancing, though you won't hear it editorialized, that I find many aspects of it as a direct descendent of the kind of dancing I did as a kid, and into my adulthood. About one of the last times I did dance on the regular, at joints like 'Giant Step' in Los Feliz and the West Village in the early 90s, I could feel that feeling. And in recent months, with my abortive attempt at Capoeira, some of that energy was in my bones. In my chair I could feel my own interpretations taking place, starting with pieces of the Bankhead Bounce. I'll have to do some more, me and my gut, to say what more there is to say.

What I like about the style itself, if there's much more of a distinction between clowning and krumping, is the collaborative style of krump. The yanking and the pulling right at the 'bam' moment is really arresting. The momentum that could be gotten out of these moves must certainly be some of where the form has gone since the filming, or at least one hopes.

I hope there's more to see of this.

The Three Rs

Doc says it was probably some distraught French Algerian who set off the bombs in London. A combination of losing the Olympics and losing one's sense of dignity combines into the radical insanity of a mad bomber. There's a sordid joke in there somewhere, but I've come to expect that from my brother the cop, and I definitely have that sense of humor. In the end, however, this is just the thing to shush up all the fingerpointing over the Downing Street Memo. It won't however, because there are too many people who see this kind of terrorist murder as the exact same thing as British and American 'warmongering'. More's the pity.

If the occasion of this attack was not just coincidental with the opening of the G8 Summit, I think it is appropriate to suggest that some European balls are in order. That is to say since everyone seems to be concerned that we are not doing enough for Africa, perhaps they should simply decide which African country to help. In this, if they have the courage of their convictions, they out to take a cue from George W. Bush. That is to say they should prioritize their three Rs, their resources, their rationale and their resolve. Pick a country and do what you ought.

The very idea that forgiving all of Africa's debt is going to solve the host of problems those many different nations face is as absurd as the radical conviction that continually cries that Western 'underfunding' is the sole cause of African misery. The ocean of African pain cannot be boiled. You simply have to drain one swamp at a time. GWBush for better or worse had the conviction to decide where to pick his battles and decided to go after Iraq. There is no question that America will be held accountable for the success or failure of Iraq from here on out.

But who among the do-gooders on the Africa question is willing to put up their nation's reputation with such determination as their rhetoric suggests? Or is this just a payoff? I think that the EU's unwillingness to call what's going on in Sudan a genocide and put their boots on that ground demonstrates why the EU is a bad idea. There is no coalition there, it's the EU starring Great Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. In other words, it is what it always was, Western Europe.

The G8 is not an organizing body for world peace. There is no such thing. There are simply nations with leaders who are willing to step up, and there are those others who merely who pontificate and bribe.

I say today there is a new transatlantic alliance between these two great English speaking nations. We are bonded in spirit and courage. While others stand aside and allow tragedy after tragedy transpire irresponsibly, we have taken the unpopular but necessary actions. Maybe that means we in America have to take a pass on Sudan and Liberia (My pick would be Liberia, for sure). But which wealthy powerful nation has stepped forward in the past five years?

Let me take a quick moment to link to Wretchard at the Belmont Club in order to underscore that I don't expect squat from the UN.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the United States this week to consider sending troops to Haiti to support a U.N. peacekeeping mission beset by mounting armed challenges to its authority, according to senior U.N. officials. ... He expressed hope that the United States would participate in a planned U.N. rapid reaction force, authorized by the Security Council earlier this month, that would have the firepower to intimidate armed gangs threatening the country's fragile political transition. Officials said that similar requests are being considered for other countries, including Canada and France. "We want scarier troops," one senior U.N. official said.

We already know that the UN closed down their mission in Baghdad when they were attacked. Cowards.

Is there a quote somewhere? Hmm. I'll make one up. "Cowardice is the natural disposition of those who lack resources, rationale and resolve. It is foolish to expect more from them, no matter how loudly they talk."

Public Whistleblower's Escrow

I must confess that although most of my passion about the Plame Affair is spent, the idea that Karl Rove is the dealer of dirt makes for a healthy bashing. I say whomever did it should go down, but I won't get particularly purturbed if it doesn't happen. Part of the reason has to do with the complexity of the shield privileges and my orientation towards technology.

I always believed that some private companies or entities (and I had always thought it would be banks until I realized how wealthy and powerful ISPs have become) would do the public a great favor by providing digital escrow accounts. The basic idea was for an individual to be able to do the 'swiss banking' thing with their digital data.

Anyway, cut to the chase, here's what I'm looking for. I am looking for bloggers and cypherpunks to come up with a way to shield and serve whistleblowers, and I want Pajamas Media to be the place. If you don't trust Time or the MSM, trust the blogosphere.

Now the only question is how.

Hiphop Lit: The Serious Question

Chances are that if they come, they'll come through Bomani or perhaps through Negrophile. There's no direct link between Honeysoul and here and EJFlavors doesn't do links any longer. I live in the same town as Mister JT but we don't know each other. So that's why I ask a question that might not be answered.

Who is the best hiphop author?

What is the literature of the today's hiphoppers? There has got to be something to grab onto here. See, I'm tempted to come out the side of my neck, but I really want an honest answer - and I'll roll with that.

The Sound of the Drum

I've been sharing MP3s with a 70 year old man who gets bored with all the interpretations of Coltrane because right about now all the disagreements are agreed to. He's having a bit of a time distinguishing Black Sheep from Black Eyed Peas but that won't last for long because I know this man as Pops, and he doesn't sleep. You see all those MP3s are my rips of everything under iTunes under the label 'hiphop'. Every once in a while he mumbles something about a candy store, and I still don't know what he's talking about.

So yesterday before it got dark and the fog rolled over and squashed the biggest boom the pyrotechnicians could explode, I peeped his copy of the big fat detailed book of hiphop that people been buzzin' bout.

After skimming a good third of the book in rapid fashion, I found several things worth saying. And so I said it to Y, one of the few people who know as much about Jessye Norman as they know about Mandrill. which is to say plenty. She, like I, has that annoying habit of squirting out title, artist and year whenever the music changes within 5 seconds of the opening note. I have to confess that she's faster and more comprehensive. And so when the 80s band at Wilson Park, Night Ranger, played Bow Wow Wow, I had to shutup and give props. And the simple fact is that she is older both me and Jimi (but not put together). Still before that, I had the moment - and the better part of wisdom is knowing precisely when it's time to respond, even if you're not called - and I said that that young man Jeff Chang was entirely too quick to dismiss Malcolm McLaren and made too much of the Zulu Nation.

Now Y and I had been commiserating all afternoon over filling in the gaps in 1975. It came down to a lot of ConFunkShun and Kool when it was time to exchange bytes, but we had also done a lot of thinking about Lonnie Liston Smith and most especially Cuba Gooding's group, The Main Ingredient. Which brings me to a confession about 1975 and my father's Webcor. I made a 7 inch reel that summer at 7.5 ips, and spent untold hours writing my own liner notes and calligraphic letters on the custom cover that I designed. The two greatest songs on that reel were 'Rolling Down a Mountainside' and Al Green's 'Take Me to the River'. I shouldn't jab but Y agrees that Luther's version got nothing on Major Harris. That was the summer of 1975 and we had just only begun to get back to it, irony of ironies that Pops wants 2005.

When I took my daughter's braids out the other night, I decided that we'd watch a DVD together for the 90 minutes of mutual tedium, pain and love. I went to the shelf and pulled the first volume of Jeeves and Wooster. PG Wodehouse has a new 8 year old fan. I've been forgetting something about PG Wodehouse. It's his English, not the King's that makes Jeeves and Wooster all that. As dashed topping as it is to suck up that world, I have to force myself to remember that I'm watching through his brilliant eye. History belongs to the drummers.

And so now, when I damned well ought to be sleep, I'm caught once again in the drum circle over the spirits of hiphop, that thread of blackness we are all forced to grapple with because of the insistence of that spirit and that thing it does to us with enough nerve to put bits into the ether, pen to paper, hand onto skin.

So it occurs to me as I figure a way to leave this and catch my winks that we have to roll with the context. The long view and the interweaving is what's going to keep the beats echoing. That's about life, meaning that it's not about anybody's life in particular. That's the thing to remember when you're dealing with spirits - they pass through you like an irresitable force, and trying to make your hand remain your own hand on the drum just makes for an ideosyncracy in the rhythm. That's your moment, but your moment comes and goes. So there will always be someone to remind you that Luther was second, and maybe even third to say Love Won't Let Me Wait.

It's always good that there are another umpdeump thousand words trying to carry the spirit of the boogie. Detail is good, it's evocative of your own dislocation. So Chang's obsession with the South Bronx brings my South Los Angeles into sharp focus (and half that story ain't never been told). Even Bam's hand only defines his moment. Give him this, Bambataa understood that he could only say 'Here's a perfect beat for you'. It wasn't the perfect beat, it was an offering.

And so here we are still serving the spirit, trying to be a drummer for history. That's what can't stop.

Animal Simplicity

Schneier's Next

I don't often say so, but in my world some of my greatest fascinations lie with economics, the nuclear industry, and espionage. I've never really said that out loud in that order and it strikes me that the combination of the three would make for a fairly interesting airport paperback. In fact, I'm sure I've read a Marcinko like that.

So on the heels of the last book I read 'My Life as a Quant' and while Cortazar's short stories are still open, I have started Bruce Schneier's 'Beyond Fear'. I love the way this guy thinks and I wouldn't mind studying what he's written for a long time. Even though this book is light on the geek factor, I am finding it to be one of those great books that capture something seminal about the way our society works.

Here is a man who understands the emergent behavior or complex systems and how we make security decisions in our daily behavior. These are the true dynamics of our society and I see very broad implications in understanding these interactions, not just in how they relate to security, but all of the systems we inhabit and tweak.

So far it's adding up to be a very good read. I think Schneier sees things as well as John McPhee.

Wilson Park 2005

I took about 90 pictures yesterday and it took me about that many to screw up the courage to take pictures of people face to face. There were only three moments that began to capture the spirit of the day. The third was a family picture and I've decided not to bore you with more of that.

I found in this particular shot, among all of them, a great deal to investigate.

Three Girls

It Ain't Apple Pie, but..

For the Banger

Lee continues with her emails and we have some hella deep discussions. She has informed me that she has referred some of her old clients toward the blog, and so I feel obligated to recognize. This one is for the ex-gangbanger.

I am the oldest of five kids, four of us boys. I grew up in a knuckle-up neighborhood in the 70s. No knives, no guns, but on any particular day you might find yourself on the bad end of a flurry of fists. I wrote about two of my notable encounters with bangers, but it doesn't really end there. I also knew a kid named Dana, who was as far as I knew, the founder of the Gangsta Crips. Dana was scared to death, and he never wanted to be scared again.

The reasons for banging are always as simple as anything a 7th grader can understand. Necessity. Tradition. Respect. Protection. It's the choice between being a man or a mark when the man's way is the gang. I think it is practically impossible to choose another way when you are a boy, because there is nothing a boy wants more than to be a man. Boys always follow men.

Back about 8 years ago, I had a brief correspondance with Monster Kody Scott, LA's most famous gangbanger and late resident of Pelican Bay. He was just getting out and had been putting together his prison writing - he sent me a package for review. Reading what I did of his work and knowing what I did of his life story, I realized that he understood deeper than just about anyone the Code of the Warrior. Except he wasn't anyone's warrior but his own - the leader of an outcast tribe. But Kody's most important lesson for me was that of the affinity of boys to manly deeds and the absolute need they have for each other.

If it was my job to tell how to keep an ex-banger straight, I would offer the same advice Kody did, in reverse. Understand the effect you have on a young man and be his leader.

Nothing keeps a man on a path as knowing that his example is being closely followed by others who want to be just like him. Nothing dogs a man like knowing that he's being scrutinized by others who hate his guts. For us men, this is what makes us or breaks us. Our reputation, our word, what people know us for. That's what we're all about. This is a harsh and cruel world, and all you've got are your few skills and strengths, and you need a space where those count for something, where people give you a break because they understand what you're all about.

No man wants to start from scratch, ever. It means clawing your way up, like a boy, all over again. Why? Necessity. Tradition. Respect. Protection. But if your reputation is broken and you know it, there is no other way. If and when you know you have got to change, then you have to start at the bottom of something new and work your way up. There is no such thing as conversion. You make yourself into something by doing the work. Than you become this larger being that contains the old thing but feeds itself only by the new thing. And in that you become wiser than you thought you could be.

Anyone who gets much past the 7th grade mentality and sees more than just one 'hood, knows that the gang is the way of the mark, and not the way of the man. There are only three gangs that survive in America. The cops, the military and the CIA. They rule. Nuff said.

And do check out Solomon.

It's All About the BBQ

Why Is This Man Smiling?

The Black Political Spectrum

In my unceasing efforts to distinguish and differentiate African Americans from the monolithic reductions imposed upon them, I add yet another breakout for your consideration.

This comes after some thought about what it is about VisionCircle that I do and do not like and what is behind my finding political debate in the blogosphere increasingly tiresome. I have claimed for myself the somewhat odd lineage of the progressive side of the Old School. I have discovered that from the national perspective this makes me a Moderate Republican, a geopolitical neocon and a mainline Hayekian as well as one mostly in line with the Chicago School of economics. (Thanks Quizilla). But it doesn't explain why I continue to pay so much attention to non-conservatives, and why the Free Republic isn't in my blogroll.

I have discovered that the reason primarily owes to my respect for the Progressive tradition in African American politics.

We have touched on the differences between 'conservative blacks' and 'black conservatives' and while that has been useful to a certain extent, it's a bit to personal for my tastes. It leaves too much sting and ad hominem on the 'black conservative' label which inevitably leads to notions of 'race treachery'. What that evokes once more is the errant notion that black unity is destiny and that the coalition of African American interest that assembled during the 60s is not only inevitable but permanent. I think a more accurate telling of the story of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement acknowledges that many different classes of Negroes from different regions and backgrounds found common ground with themselves, whitefolks and people from around the world for a brief period. I identify three main streams of thought emerging from that period as Liberal, Progressive and Conservative.

I will not attempt to map out an entire taxonomy of buckets and litmus tests for these groups, but there is something more than "I know 'em when I see 'em." going on here. The greatest difference between the streams, in my estimation, are their respective orientations to the mainstream of American society. I think it is especially appropriate to consider this for Independence Day. We have clearly inherited the American tradition of free political thought and as blacks, expressed it in three ways.

The Black Liberal Tradition
The black liberal presumption is that the mainstream of American society is largely rich and corrupt, and owes something of its redemption in tribute to blackfolks. It sees American iniquity and wealth as an annuity that should accrue to its downtrodden and oppressed, and focuses its political energy in both keeping this idea alive and finding every instance applicable. In this tradition, the core of black life is survival against an implacable System, of subversion and revolutionary triumph. It should come as no surprise that there are deeply held socialist credos at work. The patron saints of the black liberal tradition are Harriet Tubman and the pre-mecca Malcolm X its poets laureate Audre Lorde and Tupac Shakur. Their aim is to escape and fight. They insist that black America is too different, it's history too painful. It says to America, all you can do for me is shutup and fix me a sandwich.

The Black Progressive Tradition
The black progressive presumption is that 'there is much work to be done' to the American Mainstream to make it acceptable. Of the three traditions, it is the most pro-black and independent. To the black progressive, any idea or concept that isn't vetted by a black intellectual vanguard is suspect. It wants to design an organic vision of the future which is specifically crafted by black people for black people. It sees America as a country that has simply not been designed with blackfolks in mind, a country that requires significant reform in order to be compatible with the destiny of the African American. Their mission is to establish that reform and insure that everybody gets with the program. The patron saint of the progressives is W.E.B DuBois and its poet laureate is Carter Woodson. For the progessive, knowledge is power. They aim to be the underground hiphop, the drop squad, the boule, the nouveau Negroes, the New World Afrikans and all things cutting edge. They are creative, innovative and sophisticated. All of their ideas and terminologies change every 7 years.

The Black Conservative Tradition
To black conservatives, the American mainstream is no more and no less than it needs to be. The black conservatives say give me that old time religion, it's good enough for me. Their attitude is that America is just fine, and if you could put down your pride and figure out how to live in it, you'd be just fine too. Black conservatives say that everything blacks need for success is right in front of their faces and it focuses its political energy in trying to urge blackfolks to use tried and true methods. They say that the destiny of the African American is lockstep with the destiny of America and the existentials of blackness is more hindrance than help. Stop trying to make blackness more than the color of your skin, they say, and the importance of skin color will evaporate - the sooner the better. The patron saints of the conservatives are Booker T. Washington and Colin Powell. Its poet laureate is Thomas Sowell.

Abort! Abort!

Empty Protest

Once again I am compelled to speak up on the Memin Pinguin controversy. I am finding myself annoyed at African American demands for changes in Mexican policy over their exposure to a cartoon. I expect blackfolks to get upset at characters like Mugabe, not fictional ones.

Not that I have been paying close attention to the international scene, but right about now there is a full-blown humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe.

According to the United Nations, the destruction of shanty towns has left at least 200,000 people homeless.

The statement from the bishops was unequivocal: "We have on our hands a complete recipe for genocide; we're witnessing a tragedy of unprecedented enormity."

It's one of the strongest statements yet from church leaders in the region on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

There is nothing remotely approaching this situation in Mexico, and yet pundit after pundit is yelping for apology and soothing statements. In fact, there is no crisis in Mexico. Listen to Ofari:

Many Mexicans refer to dark skinned persons, both Mexican, and non-Mexican, as negritos or little black people. This is not seen as racially offensive, but rather as a term of affection even endearment. A popular afternoon telenovela has a comedian in blackface chasing madly after light-complexioned actresses in skimpy outfits. Ads have featured blacks in Afros, blackface, and distorted features. The most popular screen stars in film and on TV, and the models featured on magazines and billboards, are white or fair-skinned with sandy or blond hair. That's the standard of beauty, culture, and sophistication that's held up as the penultimate standard to emulate, and that standard is unabashedly commercialized, and peddled as top commodities in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Memin signifies that there are no black video hos television spokesmodels in Mexico. Awww.

This is a situation which is generated out of a politics that has no sense of priority or perspective. It is a reaction machine working on autopilot, mindlessly looking for offense, assuming evil and lodging complaint after useless complaint. It is nothing more than the continuously operating principle of bad faith, and I urge sensible people to break from its cycle of despair and cynicism.

Step away from the cartoon.

80s Party Vibe

Once again I watched with the spousal unit PDiddy's new comedy showcase. It's almost impossible to imagine, given how he poses in this joint that he got his start as a dancer. Not that I've been watching any videos lately, but I'm fairly certain that the only rapper with any cred on the dance floor is Usher, and well, is he a rapper? If the death of R&B foreshadows the death of black dance music, we've got a bigger problem.

So right now I am listening to Tracie Spencer and it's about one of the very last vibes of the mid and late 80s. So I'd like to take a pause for the cause and bow my head in a moment of silence for the age when being a popular black muscial star meant you were serious about dancing and making music to dance to.

Nocera - Summertime Summertime

Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - I Wonder If You Take Me Home

Paula Abdul - Straight Up

RFTW - Oh Sheila

Orbit - The Beat Goes On

My Prerogative - Bobby Brown

Teddy's Jam - Teddy Riley

Hashim - Al Naafiysh

Aleem - Release Yourself

Twilight 22 - Electric Kingdom

Klymaxx - The Men All Pause

Cybotron - Clear

Zapp - I Can Make You Dance

Morris Day - Tricky

I guess I could go on and on until the break of dawn...

Goodbye Luther

This time it's true, Luther Vandross is dead.

More than anyone outside of Prince and Michael Jackson, Luther's career was studded with rumors and innuendo. His talent was just too large to ignore and his battles for health are almost as legendary as his songs were fabulous.

I am probably one of the few for whom a Luther Vandross song means little personally. My favorite from him was his version of Stevie Wonder's 'Creepin', but unlike most folks I've talked to, there was no Vandross in my memories of love and romance. Maybe it's because I was just a dog, and Luther's music wasn't seductive enough - you just can't get a mack on talking about a chair just being a chair. 'Here and Now' is probably the most overused wedding song in African America. How many times have I known the groom for whom that song only resonates on that one day? But I'm being crass and cynical.

Luther was one of the good guys. He was unpretentious, and acknowledged, like few others, that his was a gift from God. Oftimes he seemed not to want to be burdened with it. Like Oprah, he was blessed with a curse of talent and still was little old me, wrestling with the demons of fame. He was too sweet to have the growling masculinity of Teddy Pendergrass or the soaring sensuality of Marvin Gaye. But he was much more genuine than characters like Freddy Jackson who seemed to work the stage purely for the opportunity to catch thrown panties from the audience. Nor was Vandross a hawker like Lou Rawls who always seemed to me to be on the make.

In this way, Vandross, no matter what was said about him, was always a class act. His example will be missed.

Here We Go

Reforming The UN #2: Least Favored Nation

I'm going to jump on the back of Dean Esmays raging rhino of common sense, emboldened as he and I have become because of Rummel. And since I still have some strivings of Empire, I'll consider the possibility of turning some of that authority to the new UN. So this is my opportunity to add Reform #2 - Least Favored Nation.

I mentioned this idea a couple years ago:

I propose that every 7 years, the United Nations and anybody else who cares about the state of the planet, elect a least favored nation. Halfway into the cycle, the international community wallops the dictator chosen last go round, or celebrates the triumph of reform. Just like the Olympics. The problem is dictatorships, this should be obvious.

I'm clearly not the first person to suggest that dictators can be ranked. Nor does it take any great intelligence to know one when you see one. The trick is how do you get the world to sidle alongside so one isn't percieved as unilateral. Easy. Schedule the hostilies 7 years in advance. Most dictators hang around too long, and they don't listen up. Chances are when they are elected by the International Dictator's Tribunal, if they are ruthless enough, they'll still be around when the world's patience is officially scheduled to end.

This is a kind of internationalism I can get behind. It would be a gold rush of opportunism to be sure, but what an extraordinary movement. As often as folks badger the G8 for not ending world poverty or AIDS all at once, why not simply end dictatorships one nation at a time? Is there a country that could withstand the onslaught of the United Democratic Nations' Security Forces?

The Other Side of Memin

Here and there are some references to a stamp to which some African Americans took offense. Since I'm not particularly enamored with the politics of protest I've decided to take another angle. Much of that has to do with the fact that I've got a little bit of Juneteenth on my mind, but more on that later. The other has to do with my old friend Tony Gleaton.

It is a little known fact that Mexico banned slavery before the United States. It's fairly easy to dog Vicente Fox these days, and he certainly deserves a lot of criticism, but the Mexico of old deserves a lot of recognition too. It was the first post-colonial nation, and to the extent that progressives ought to mark that with some positive regard, a postage stamp is but a drop in the bucket. Then again, that may be the only bucket some folks are holding. I've been finding it odd that there are those who would say that Texans weren't racist in holding back news that slaves should be free, when just across the Rio Grande, it was already the case. Wouldn't it be interesting to have found an underground railroad that went South from Texas? Isn't it interesting that there's one today going North to Texas?

There was a time, in my progressive days, that I looked to Latin America for inspiration. I was an avid reader of Fuentes and Borges, although Marquez does nothing for me and my jury is out on Cortazar. Yet nothing quite brought home the affinity as hanging out with Tony Gleaton in his old studio on North Figueroa on the border of Pasadena.

Tony's black and white photographs were stunning and still are. But these were more than just testimony, they were a bridge. Knowing Tony made the difference. He was a Vietnam vet, and for him it was all about being in the territory. So we parted ways when he decided to take another long journey south of the border to capture more of his and our heritage - that of Africans in the New World.

It's not enough to know there are blacks in Mexico. They are not black in the way we are and there is no simple way to explain our kinship, but our willingness to do so is the first step to brotherhood and respect. It is a step most of us have not taken. It is the step I think we should take as we take this opportunity to complain about the lack of respect we get from people who have no clue about who we are and what we're like. For the truth is, almost none of us know who Afro-Mexicans are or what they are like, and without the photos of Gleaton, we'd know even less. After all, the complaint isn't so much of what Mexicans think of themselves, but of us African Americans. This isn't part of our politics.

I'm not prepared to suggest that none of us Anglos have what it takes to put Memin in context. It is what it is whatever we think. But I wonder if we are thinking long and hard enough about our international brotherhood to make such a big issue out of such a small item. If I can have my way, let Gleaton's images of real people be to reason to think of Mexico, not a postage stamp of a fictional character.

A Buppie Rejoinder on the Death of R&B

I'm reading Mark Anthony Neal's three parter and I've run over the rumblestrips of the term 'organic' once too many. So I'd like to run some commentary in parallel from the bap & buppie perspective.

This is already inside poker, but I'm not too stingy to offer a few hints. Baps are black American princes/princesses and buppies are like yuppies, just black. These are the people I partied with in from the Dons, back in the days of which Neal speaks, and there are just some things I gotta speak on. He paints a nicely complicated history but one that doesn't shy away from dropping a conspiracy theory nor painting over-glowing portraits of pre-dirty south gutbucket blues in that way that academics chasing 'authentic voices of the people' do. I, for one, have never heard of Denise LaSalle or Archie Brownlee. The one thing that could have made his series more awesome than it is would have been some quotes from the artists and managers themselves. His presumptions about the way recording artists dealt with the forces of the industry are just that, presumptions. What we cannot see are the motivations of those other than the putatively culture stealing kingpins at the top of the heap. He wants to follow the money, I want to follow the music and the musicians.

Let's pick-up somewhere between Wilson Pickett and Whodini.

Out here in LA at the foot of Baldwin Hills and the edge of Culver City were the sons and daughters of first, second and third generation college graduates. During the 70s we were the bleeding edge of integration, attending private schools with the sons and daughters of white privilege. We brought our Bar Kays and Mother's Finest they brought their Foghat and Led Zep. Some of their stuff wasn't bad, and some of them thought the same. So despite their tendency to steal the basketball straight off the brothers' court and run and ours to initiate stomps without telling them the rules, our musical tastes rubbed off on each other.

So by 1980 lots of brothers and sisters like me were not only diggin' on easy stuff like Steely Dan and Toto, but harder stuff like Pat Benetar. Our parents may not have liked Rick James' Funk & Roll but we were responding to the hard rock guitar licks not only of the Stone City Band and the Isleys, but of the original Walk This Way and AC/DC too. I have yet find a brother (not that I do surveys) who didn't feel the Doobie's China Grove or Stanley Clarke's hardest rock fusion.

But that wasn't the only distraction from the monopoly of R&B. It was the synthesizer. Starting deep in the bowls of funk was the magnificence that was George Duke, but let us not forget the king prototype black geek: Larry Dunn of Earth Wind & Fire surrounded by keyboards and synthesizers. What would hiphop be without Kraftwerk and Bambataa? What was Donna Summer without Giorgio Moroder? It can be reasonably said in retrospect that the vibe established by Herbie Hancock's Rockit has never been eclipsed in hiphop, but the love for systhesizer music had been a long time coming and took black kids out into David Bowie territory along with a lot of the New Wave acts of the 80s.

So between 1978 and 1988 my cohort was doing a hell of a lot of partying and hiphop was just a part of that. With the rhythm it took to live through what we had to dance to, you could dance to new wave and not get white. We were the ones who suffered through the bad old days of Midnight Star and Newcleus but broke out with the Family, The Time, Orbit, ABC and Thomas Dolby. We survived on Roger Troutman in the days when hiphop was still half-witted and half-baked. Unless you lived in the South Bronx, there was no sophistication to hiphop, nor a reason to expect much from it. And it wasn't until the debut of groups like Loose Ends, Tone Toni Tony [sic, I know], Guy that it was worth turning back to black radio stations which had developed a serious aversion to the music that worth listening and dancing to. Nothing quite said it like the two underground hits that had my crew on fire 'Irresistable Bitch' and 'Tricky'.

The early 80s was a hectic time of transition for the tastes of black college students. We had, on one hand, Paul Hardcastle, Art of Noise, Arif Mardin and Scritti Politti with the leading edge stuff and 'commercial' hiphop idiocy like Egyptian Lover, Rockberry, Full Force and 'The Cars that Go Boom'. Nile Rodgers and Bernard Evans had suddenly been cast to the dirt - how did that happen? But still, we got 'Lets Dance'. But it was a bit too much when we had to deal with The Powerstation as an example of the new Rock. New Wave was cool but it only rarely had the slammin' beat we needed. The only consistency we had was Prince, and you couldn't love Prince if you couldn't hang with Rock. It was frustrating - made a brother want to scratch Steely Dan's 'Hey Nineteen' and so we did.

Political Victory & The Rules of Engagement

I've been thinking about the principled questions surrounding the role of women in warfare which has taken me up to questions about the political contexts of victory and how these dictate the rules of engagement.

For example, there is no current political context for which rape would be considered a valuable weapon. The aim is not to save our bloodlines from extinction. But there is a political context in which victory could be defined as destroying the infrastructure of command and control over the enemy. That can be done with jets and missiles, instead of rape squads. How do you deploy jets and missiles? Sometimes it's just as easy to use a female as a male soldier. The answer is in the details.

The rules of engagement are always dictated by the political terms of victory.

I can see how liberal politics might decide to change the rules of engagement so that a war might necessarily become a 'quagmire', and what conservatives like me are constantly bitching about is how liberal opposition to the entire war in Iraq, keeps jumping on every minute opportunity to redefine victory away from the Bush policy and what makes sense to soldiers on the ground.

First it was antiquities, then it was missing ammunition in dumps, then it was firing on mosques, then it was naked pyramids, then it was body armor... the list is as long as every liberal complaint.

So I would like to invite my liberal and progressive friends and enemies here to outline their definitions of victory in Iraq, and speak honestly about what kinds of costs they are willing to endure appropriate to their investment in victory. Those not interested in victory need not apply.

My challenge to you is to explain how your belief that the expenditure of 2000 or even 5000 American soldier's lives outweighs the benefit of victory in Iraq as the president has promised. I suspect that you believe Iraq's a quagmire not only because you want it to be. I believe in the minds of many Americans, opposition to Bush is more important than victory. Their objective is to politically alienate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz but not to deliver victory in war. From this moment until the withdrawl of every last American, they will continue to scour the news for failures of every sort to retroactively call Bush's plan a failure.

Total Victory

Roe Roe Roe Your Boat