Monday, October 18th, 2004

Links R Us

+ Florida goes to the polls, and computers start crashing.

+ The tragic back story behind the Outkast “Rosa Parks” lawsuit.

+ Why we love Sandra Oh.

+ Freelance Mentalists and Different Kitchen keeping it hot.

+ The October surprise? Tommy Tompkins points out this internet conspiracy-theory: Osama is in China. I can’t even start on this one, the mind just reels…

posted by @ 10:29 am | 0 Comments

Friday, October 15th, 2004

Links and Eggs

Jesus Walks: Adrienne Maree Brown and the pissed off voters watch the last debate. Then they put their money where they mouth is.

Mister, We Could Use A Man Like Herbert Hoover Agaaaain: Krugman on how Reeps spin job loss.

Orlando Magic: Tanzila Ahmed on going door to door in Florida.

The Tipping Point?: Kerry closes the gap in electoral votes. Again, the conservative pollsters call it closer than the liberal ones.

Honky-Tonkers For Truth: Country musicians against Bush? Maybe the tipping point really has come!

Still slowly updating the blogroll, listening and reading lists…

posted by @ 6:29 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, October 14th, 2004

Last Call

Ever notice how Bush’s smile is mad crooked? My kids can’t stop clowning him. The last debate was amusing, especially Bush’s I really care about Osama quote. It was also funny to see Kerry out-faithing Bush, and re-outing Mary Cheney, a topic apparently more aggravating than Halliburton. And if you thought the whole thing was a charade, here’s your proof. I can’t say I’m not partisan, but the “snap polls” are registering Kerry and I gotta believe that folks are walking away from the debates thinking Bush’s intelligence diminished, his stature a bit more impish.

posted by @ 8:22 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, October 13th, 2004

The Journal Or The Journalist? Jin, Oliver, and Me

So OK, finally got the Jin package today for a review I’m doing for next week’s Bay Guardian. This here is kinda a throat-clearing, a warmup and a digression from the writing I’m gonna do for that.

Once again, it all starts with a blog post.

In February, Madison at Diesel Nation had a strange, fascinating post about Jin. Noting Oliver’s sharp critique of Jin’s video, he made a canny point: “And so begins the culture critiques that will mark Jin’s career more than his musical talent.”

The post ends with Madison’s comments about how he thought Jin’s presence might actually displace me and Oliver from some imaginary position as the Asian American vox populi.

He wrote:

“I think O-Dub, as an Asian hip-hopper himself, is asking too much from the young kid. But I understand what’s up. When Jin’s album drops he’ll become the resident hip-hop pundit that will represent the voice of all Asian rap fans out there. Who needs a quote from Oliver Wang or Jeff Chang when you got a Ruff Ryder ready to speak? I’m not saying O-Dub is jealous, but I certainly understand if he’s scared. I’m a conservative leaning Black man who has to deal with the stupid things Stanley Crouch writes three times a week. Trust me, I understand.”

I found the post weird–esp. the assumption that there’s a limit on the number of Asian American males that can take up media space. And I certainly don’t waste any time waiting on Dan Rather or Ted Koppel to call me for “the Asian American male opinion” on anything. Most folks who call me for an opinion on hip-hop–and it ain’t like my phone is ringing off the hook–aren’t trying to get a specifically Asian American one anymore anyway.

As another digression, I do have peers and elders that set out in their lives to be “an Asian American voice”, a necessary and very important role in a media that’s antagonistic to expressing race in America in anything other than white, white, and a little bit black. This is a country in which right-wingers make Michelle Malkin a centerfold, and progressives will be happy to have one Asian surname in their Palm Pilot to ignore. It’s a thankless task, and I haven’t had enough patience, persistence, or focus to try to make that my life.

So anyway I just noted Madison wasn’t bearing any ill will, just making an observation, and I ignored it cause it didn’t really make any sense in the world I actually live in.

When I think about it now, Madison actually was taking a slightly different spin on a point I had made–per Greg Tate–in an article about hip-hop journalism for a book called Pop Music and The Press. I couldn’t imagine Madison had read that article, hell, I barely read it. Anyway, here’s what I had written, in respect of hip-hop journalism’s plunge into celebrity circle-jerking:

“Hip hop journalists are regularly forced to confront holy-rolling baby-boomers like Joe Lieberman and C. Delores Tucker whose reactionary politics obliterate the sore to save the cancer. So these kinds of narratives can serve as defense mechanisms: a way of protecting and justifying the existence of a generation so debased by outsiders and elders. In fact, many hip hop writers are cowed by the power that rappers claim in the act of representing. As Rakim put it, “In this journey, you’re the journal. I’m the journalist.” Intimidated by such hypertextuality, writers reduce themselves to confirming a rapper’s “reality” or conforming to it in order to defend it. Authenticity marks the hip hop nation’s borders.”

I don’t think Jin’s presence diminishes the presence of any other Asian American males. There’s a scale question here: Jin’s life is what’s being written. Us AAMPCs are just the readers.

That’s the brilliance of O-dub’s now infamous AAMPC Clones post. None of us ever got into this low-paying, always hustling, so-called career to get gassed by some talking head. Generally we’re some ugly motherfuckers with a fairly pathetic obsession. And when we aren’t mistaken for each other, we all pretty much get ignored equally.

In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ forthcoming Village Voice piece–next week, most likely, I’ll link when it’s up–the presence of Jin opens up the subject of Asian American masculinity and manhood. Not talking Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, or Bruce Lee. Asian American male-ness becomes the subject. The better Jin’s album, the greater the likelihood this conversation gets moving. For the piece, Ta-Nehisi called a bunch of us to chat, and in truth, it was maybe one of the first times many of us got to talk about these kinds of issues outside our own rarefied circles. The point is: Jin’s the myth, we’re just here to tell it again.

The interesting thing for us AAMPCs and AAFPCs–and BTW can we give some love to the AAFPCs? They’re the ones who are really making it happen–is now there’s a subject to match our own subjectivities. The question is how we respond. Do we get magnetized? Or do we mix it up? In a way, it’s a teaching moment we shouldn’t miss.

So I’d say it makes perfect sense for Oliver and the rest of us to be critical–in the same way Madison may be of Stanley Crouch. The world is big enough for all of that.

posted by @ 1:21 pm | 24 Comments

Tuesday, October 12th, 2004

Link-O-Rama

Links from NYC and the Inbox:

+ Caught the excellent Riddim Driven photo exhibition at Eyejammie Gallery, run by the indubitable Bill Adler, the writing genius behind last week’s brilliant VH1 Hip-Hop History series. (Plugola: link here for my Kool Herc blurb for tonight’s Hip-Hop Honors show…)

This is a must-see, with tons of historic shots from London, Kingston, and New York…The best is Ajamu’s incredible picture of the 1999 West Indian Day Parade on the Eastern Parkway, featuring a VP float with Beenie, Spragga, and our boy Sean A Paul–as a crazy baldhead, smiling and sporting big fat Uncle Junior glasses.

+ While we’re on the topic of roots, Burt Lum was a pioneer of the Honolulu DIY scene. In the mid-80s, he started two zines, Novus and Brouhaha, that became the center of a lot of left-of-center energy. He brought together the Waikiki post-punks, the Manoa post-hippies, the KTUH radio jocks, and some of the emerging hip-hop heads together into a weird wonderful scene that I was fortunate to be a part of. I may–or may not, I can’t remember–have published my first stuff in Brouhaha when I was like barely out of high school (or maybe still in? Damn I’m getting old). Anyway, Burt’s started up the zine again as a blog, and you can catch up with it here. Welcome back!

+ John Leland’s new book Hip: A History is an ambitious and important book, well worth digging into for its takes on cultural miscegenation and generational change. The proof of its intelligence: Luc Sante’s equally literate and compelling objection in this week’s Voice. Bonus proof: Matos interviews Leland.

+ Check the blogroll for tons o’ new links. Meanwhile O-dub muses on the politics of blogrolling. Check the comments for bonus beef!

posted by @ 7:44 am | 1 Comment

Tuesday, October 12th, 2004

Underdog Love In October

I, for one, am sick of all these stories about the “long suffering”, “long frustrated” Boston Red Sox. I hope they beat the Yankees, but really, leave it alone already. Jeezus. These punk asses have the second highest payroll in baseball and they act like they’ve had a hard knock life. Just replace “Boston Red Sox” with the words “Jeb Bush” or “Coors Beer” or “Steve Stoute” or “Ashley Simpson”. See what I mean?

Just cause you asked, I’m rooting for these guys. My soundtrack is Face’s “Guess Who’s Back”.

Of course, they have no chance. That’s the definition of underdog. Sox fans have confused not being the alpha dog with being the underdog.

Look, rooting for the Sox is like being down for Tony Blair, rooting for the Cards is like putting your money on the 1-to-3 horse, and that other team–well, I’m still rubbing my hands in anticipation of sweet sweet vengeance. Money don’t mean shit in October. Moo hoo hoo hahaha.

posted by @ 5:48 am | 2 Comments

Tuesday, October 12th, 2004

What Else Is Back? The Late 80s

Did you love the 80s? They’re back.

Continuing this thread, here’s an overview in the NY Times on the rise in youth homicides. In certain cities, streets have started looking again like the late 80s.

The most notable thing in the article was James Alan Fox’s comments about the Bush administration’s cutbacks on youth programs. Fox, if you remember, is no Clinton-nostalgic liberal. He’s in fact one of the right-wing ideological architects of the War on Youth.

Back at the start of the 90s, he argued that the rise in population of young black and Latino males would drive a rise in violent crime the likes of which America would have never seen. Here’s a quote from him from back then: “We are facing a potential bloodbath of teenage violence in years ahead that will be so bad, we’ll look back at the 1990s and say those were the good old days.”

(Yup, C. Delores Tucker was a huge James Alan Fox groupie.)

Fox’s comment looks laughably ironic these days. The 90s were the good old days–youth violent crime rates hit twenty-year lows. So he’s noticeably dialed back–or at least the writer and editor have–the tone of that ridiculous claim.

Interestingly enough, the right-wingers lost the battle for truth, but won the battle for politics. During the 90s, 48 states made their juvenile justice policies more punitive, and in 2000, the crowning achievement of the War on Youth–Proposition 21–passed in California.

But now even Fox seems to agree that the failures of Bush’s domestic and economic agenda have something to do with the rise in homicides. Certainly their War on Youth didn’t do anything to prevent it. The bottom line is that the fundamental problems–poverty, bad schools, no youth programs, etc. etc. etc.–don’t get resolved by locking more kids up or sending them to adult prisons. They just keep coming back and rearing their badass heads.

posted by @ 5:24 am | 0 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Where’s Race In This Race?

First impressions: Bush’s impassioned aggressiveness signalled weakness. His jokes–except the old “Want some wood?” frat joke–got no laughs. Kerry’s wooden-ness seemed calming in comparison. I think there is no question that Kerry projected that ineffable leadership thing.

But the main question in this race is: where’s race?

In all the discussion about joblessness, education, the war, and domestic issues, there is no talk coming from either Bush or Kerry on the issues that matter to people of color.

OK, so Bush came out against the Dred Scott decision–wow, tough call there, Mr. President–on the grounds that whoever decided that one was doing based on their personal decision. But in all the talk about jobs there is no discussion about who are the jobless, what the effect of that joblessness is on inner-city violence. In all the talk about education, there is no discussion about which children are being left behind in the rush to standardized testing and the tax-cut-driven shift of moneys toward the military. In all the talk about the Patriot Act, there is no discussion about the Muslims and South Asians who have disproportionately been slammed by the very real rollback in civil liberties.

Come on Kerry, get real. You want the base to show up on November 2? Start acting like Bush, who ain’t afraid to call a liberal a liberal.

posted by @ 6:52 pm | 1 Comment

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Enrique’s Journey

In NYC today, I caught this photo exhibition at the Open Society Institute by Don Bartletti: Enrique’s Journey. It’s the incredibly powerful story of a boy’s travels from Honduras across the border to find a mother who left him to find work in the U.S. Please see Bartletti’s photos and read Sonia Nazario’s story.

posted by @ 4:37 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, October 8th, 2004

Inconvient Evidence

While we’re on the topic of Bush’s image-management deterioration…

This from Brian Wallis’ introduction to the Inconvient Evidence exhibition of the Abu Ghraib photos at the International Center on Photography:

“Aside from the atrocities they depict, as photographs, the images from Abu Ghraib contradict the studied heroics of twentieth-century war photography that have been updated to the current conflict. Away from the photojournalistic fluorishes designed to make war palatable–the heroic flag-raisings, the dogged foot soldiers close to the action, the sense of shared humanity among combatants, and the search for visual evidence that war is universal and inevitable–the often-banal JPEGs from Iraq proffer a very different picture: war is systematic cruelty enforced at the level of everyday torture.”

Check excerpts from Seymour Hersh’s new book here. (The Department of Defense statement of defense is here. The famous New Yorker articles are archived here and here.

posted by @ 4:32 pm | 0 Comments



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