Did a News & Notes with Farai yesterday.
Is R Kelly Our Kelly?
Hells no. Then again I'm not speaking for all of America, as much as I'd like to. What I would have liked to have said about R Kelly is that there is something emotionally crippled hanging onto him. The fact that he has not been tried has given people some reason to believe he is innocent. I don't believe he is. I didn't see The Tape and I'm not ever going to, on purpose. I'm not one in favor of media executions but the dude is hinky. You don't accidentally get accused of child pornography.
The thing I see explaining the phenomenon of R Kelly's continued support among some elements of African America has to do with a sort of emotional underdevelopment. In my Big Mac analogy on the air, I suggested that folks who take fast food too seriously may do so because they don't know how to cook. If you are a good cook you can take the Big Mac or leave it. You can provide for yourself. Similarly if you could never express the emotions of "I Believe I Can Fly" on your own, then you need that song. If you cannot communicate your love to someone without the use of some commercial radio song then there's something wrong.
As I said on the air, there is implicitly something missing in the lives of any young girl that could call their relationship with R Kelly 'love'. That's real Daddy Love. More emotional cripples flocking together to call what they have...well who knows? What we do know is that justice delayed is justice denied and some kind of willful blindness has been keeping Kelly out of court for six years. It's not like he's up in Tora Bora. Get him in front of the jury. Now.
Additionally, I would note that I met Jasmyn Cannick and her family at the studio. Nice folks. I'm pretty sure I've had terse words for Cannick in the past basically about the aesthetics of her blog, but as usual, and I suppose it always bears repeating, I'm in a battle of ideas and aesthetics, and on that battleground I take few prisoners. But I'm always happy to meet people, because I love people.
It turns out that aside from being a Kwanzaan, Cannick is Old School Hermosa Beach. I first moved there in '88, but I knew that back in the day Hermosa was something of a ghetto. Around WW2, oilfield workers made their primary residence in Hermosa where the houses were smaller and the rents cheaper. It was a primarily black and latino 'hood until it gentrified almost completely. Cannick's fam was there when there were about 3 black families in the whole of the joint. (I happen to know that the Martins where there in the 60s and 70s, and there's got to be at least one other family we don't know). Cannick is perseverance in my book.
Recent Comments